Life, the Universe and Everything
by JMK758
Summary: As Gibbs and his Team discover the secrets of Operation: Life Source, National Security secrets collide with deadly threats as two Teams strive to find answers.
1. Big Brother and Uncle Sam

This is my 39th NCIS Mystery, the Ninth of my Fourth Season. (It's also my 99th FF posting so I'm approaching a personal milestone.)  
NCIS is owned by Belisarius Productions. The usual legal Disclaimers apply. I only own Rev. Siobhan (O'Mallory) McGee, Apprentice Pathologist Dr. Samantha Sky and original Agents. You can find all my stories listed in order in my Profile.  
'What do you do when the world you thought you knew isn't?'  
Rated T or NCis-17  
Please Review.

Life, the Universe and Everything  
by JMK758  
Chapter One  
Big Brother and Uncle Sam

"Ready on Alpha," the technician reports, initiating a series of similar reports which range from Beta through Rho.

"All Systems confirmed, Captain." Commander Paul Lewiston's crisp summary masks his concern about the minutes to come.

"Thank you, Exec," Captain Patrick Kotzain acknowledges. The chamber, dominated by a distant, dark screen that dwarfs most movie theaters', comprises seventy two computer stations on nine descending landings.

The sole door to the right of the forward screen opens and from his position near the top Kotzain recognizes Admiral Philip Candelario, Vice Admirals Richard Schneider and Nicole Feder together with Marine Generals Gregory Castagna and Joellen Roberts with Colonel Roderick Makenzie.

Above the door they'd entered the board displays August 10 and the year, perhaps too soon in the reckoning of man for this, and the time, 1734, or as Kotzain calls it, Zero Hour. On the recommendations of these people hangs the future funding of this program. Oh, not this year's budget, of even next year's, that'd be too merciful; these people will recommend adjustments that will accelerate or slow to a crawl the entire operation.

He's expected all six men and women who ascend the ramp along the right wall this Friday evening and in fact had no apprehension about that door opening to admit anyone but authorized and severally cleared persons. This is the deepest and most heavily guarded chamber in the complex and since he, Lewiston and all seventy two technicians are armed, a hostile force attempting to breach the room via its single door would receive a most formidable welcome.

Last through the door is the Naval Research Lab's Commander, Captain William Malone.

The seven ascend past the multiple wide levels and Project Director Kotzain salutes the Marine and Naval Officers collectively. That Admiral Candelario returns it confirms for him who's in charge, yet he directs his words to the Base Commander.

"All Stations are Go, sir. Security has confirmed all present." This Project is so secret that the people in this room had recently been re-Vetted and every man and woman has had their identities confirmed before they were admitted. After what had happened with the PDC/9, the USS Millennium and the too mysterious attack on Captain Tom Benes, no one is taking chances.

He wishes the former Project Leader, whose XO he had been, were here to see this, but the man is still officially sidelined until he's certified as having recovered from whatever it was that put him in Monroe Hospital and took Marine Private Patricia Court to Heaven & NCIS know where.

x

"Very well, Captain." Malone turns to the man at his left. "Admiral Candelario, I must repeat that I am against this demonstration at this time. Despite our best attempts it is clear that our Security has been compromised and while every man and woman here has been re-Vetted following the incidents with the PDC Mark 9 and the Millennium, I must urge caution. Project Millennium had been considered secure and with what happened to Captain Benes–"

"Captain, this is the only opportunity for the six of us to be together here for the foreseeable future. Proceed with the demonstration."

With the direct order before him, Malone can do nothing but nod to Kotzain, who in turn addresses his XO.

"Energize the Matrix, Mr. Lewiston. Set visual for one mile radius. Let's see what's out there."

x

Anyone who expects the throwing of switches, the lowering of a bone vibrating hum through a long scale that preceded the Death Star's firing its planet annihilating weapon is doomed to disappointment.

Instead the huge screen that fills the entire distant wall at the base of the well lights up, an irregular field of bright green lights clustered in the center and filling a third of the whole to spread outward into a dim green field dotted by thousands of bright green specks scattered irregularly throughout.

The dots outside the main body are irregularly spaced, many clusters appear but there are vastly more individual points. Most are stationary but dots of bright green move in specific rapid patterns. The high, wide screen shows thousands of pinpoint lights and yet indistinct green haze lightens the screen. The image seems like the starry decked heavens but Lewiston confirms to his superior "One mile radius, sir."

"Thank you Commander," Kotzain says and addresses the assembled officers. "Gentlemen, ladies, what you see before you are the individual life readings of every living thing within a one mile radius of this facility. Each and every person in the area shows up on this screen."

"Just like on a satellite infra red heat detector," General Joellen Roberts says.

"Not exactly. The two prime differences are that we do not go off satellite data, the instrumentality is contained within this unit and second, infrared tracking can be fooled. High heat areas, heat shielding, clustered bodies can all serve to break a lock. Commander, focus on this room."

x

"You heard the order, people," Lewiston says to the seventy two technicians ranged below them. The image expands rapidly enough to cause vertigo, thousands of dots fly out to all sides and the image zooms in until a final cluster within this building gives way to a recognizable arrangement of large lights, no longer pinpoints, arranged in organized rank and file with nine enlarged lights grouped at the top of the screen. Now the background is dark green.

"General Roberts, if you would be so kind as to walk down to the door and back?"

The moment she does so a single large light detaches from the cluster and follows her path in real time. The steps are laid out nine from bottom to top, but each is the width of the platforms upon which the rows of eight technicians and their control panels sit.

She makes a quick movement to the side, varies speed and angle, reverses up a step and in all things the point on the screen reflects her movements.

When she reaches the floor level the others have a clear sense of the immensity of the screen.

As she turns about and ascends the nine long steps to the group, the light takes its place in the upper cluster.

"Now identified, you could phone us from anywhere and we can tell you exactly where you are and the numbers of people around you."

"Let's not get too particular, shall we?" she asks with good nature.

"No. The system would be better used, once a Terrorist Leader is ID'ed, for our units to know exactly what chair he's sitting in and the names of all the Jihadists in the room with him."

x

"That's your present range, a ten mile diameter?" Vice Admiral Schneider asks.

"Thirty mile radius. But we find that, beyond a five mile range, identifying specific signals within a metropolitan area becomes too difficult unless we're locked on to a specific signal. Once that is done, we have tracked that specific person to thirty miles away.

"We plan in the future to link to satellite data. That is, of course, when said satellites are designed and built." He looks to Lewiston. "Show us a two point five mile radius view." The command is relayed and the view condenses to where the entire complex forms a bright spot in the center. "What you see now is five miles of the greater DC area. Each of those tiny dots is a person or, conversely, more than one person so closely situated that they render together, perhaps in physical contact. The rapidly moving points are, of course, vehicles."

He turns to Colonel Makenzie. "Marine Motto, 'Never Leave A Man Behind'. With a mobile unit, provided we have the funding for them, this can locate a man in the desert where infrared is hampered or inefficient and pinpoint him not to a square mile but to a square foot." He looks to Admiral Candelaro. "That same square foot applies to a seaman overboard or a pilot shot down in the ocean where hypothermia makes infrared useless. If he or she is alive, you know exactly from where to pull him out."

"Captain, why the haze?" Schneider asks. "When you were focused on the room, the image was sharp. I see people, they stand out, but why do you not get a clear image throughout?"

"Ants."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Crickets, honey bees, gnats, birds, squirrels, cats, dogs, goldfish... The system detects life, any and all life. Large living things like humans, they give off an intense signal, billions of tiny living things, they give off haze. We _could_ lock in on a single–"

"Then what's that?" Vice Admiral Nicole Feder asks, pointing to a spot on the upper left of the screen. The spots there, too small to distinguish even on so large a screen, are much brighter than any other in the five mile zone and grow more intense by the moment.

x

"Focus on that," Kotzain orders. But before it does the bright spot flares like a nova and, though no lights go out, the intense ones are lost among hundreds of others, none brighter now than any other.

"Any answers, Captain?" Malone asks.

"None, sir." Kotzain admits to the base commander.

"Then I suggest you find some."

"Yes, sir."

"Ladies and Gentlemen," Malone says, "if you'll step this way we'll continue the presentation. Captain, if you'll join us..."

As the officers step away, Kotzain turns to his XO and says with quiet fury "Commander, I want every circuit on this damned thing inspected and verified, even if it takes all night."

"Yes, _sir_."

xxx

Tim McGee parks his car for the first time in over two weeks across the street from the apartment house and he's really happy at the luck. Crossing the street, he sees Dorothy Lincoln coming from his right and knows she'll reach the front of the building before he will.

It's not that the woman causes him any real pain, but conversations with her can be likened to having a tooth pulled under not quite enough nitrous oxide, and so very slowly. No real pain, nothing sharp, but it goes on and on and on… and on.

He knows he can beat her to the door if he triples his speed, or better, but to do so would be ruder than he can bear to be, so he gives way to the inevitable and, as Shav says, offers the moment up in prayer.

"Good evening, Tim."

"Good evening."

"How was your day?"

"Good." He's not going to ask. There are two questions that, if one values one's sanity, one does not ask Dorothy Lincoln, the other one being 'how are you?' He's learned the hard way about each of these.

"I was surprised to see your wife and daughter at that rally this afternoon."

"Excuse me? My daughter?"

"Yes. She's such a lovely thing. Looks more like you every time I see her."

That'd be a good trick. Little six year old Bridget is Bill and Lenore Morehouse's little one and if anything she should look like her aunt Siobhan. "Errrr. Yes. Thanks." At this moment he has an insight into his neighbor but not one he wants to pursue, not with dinner and his new daughter waiting. She goes with her parents to her new home to Utah in the morning, a few hours for a touch and go rendezvous that they may not even leave Reagan for.

x

"It was such an interesting rally, though hardly suitable for a child."

"Excuse me?" he asks very unwillingly, sure he's opening a floodgate regardless of his intent but he can't help himself. "What rally?"

"Why, Clare Adams', of course."

"Of course."

"She has the most interesting theories."

"Do tell." He's sure she will.

"Nothing for children, of course, that's why I was so surprised to see your wife brought your daughter to it. Do you think that was a good idea, really?"

"I trust my wife's judgment," he says, knowing there's no polite way of getting out of hearing about this rally so he wants to hear about it quickly and get to dinner. He has to do an edit of 'The Other Locked Room' – doesn't have to but wants to – but the only way to do that is to wait until Bridget goes to bed.

"Well, that's up to you. Of course, the girl should know what she's getting into."

Now she has his attention. "What she's getting into? At a rally?"

"Well, she'll be getting married soon. She needs to know what she has to look forward to."

"Excuse me?" Momentary concern gives way to astonishment and he fights back a laugh. "Bridget is 6 years old."

"You can't start them right too soon with something this important."

"I guess not," he admits, still feeling he's swinging between stunned and lost.

"You certainly don't want her to get her heart broken, do you?"

Before he got to know Bridget, Sammy Sky was the most ecstatic person he'd ever met. He doesn't believe he'll live long enough to see either of their hearts break. "No."

"Well, then," she says, the definitive conclusion to her point.

x

x

x

'I am truly going to regret this.' "Mrs. Lincoln," he suddenly realizes he's never met a Mr. Lincoln but the man is either a Saint or in a padded cell. "What rally?"

"Clare Adams'."

He presses his hand to his forehead to work the kink from his neck. 'I so deserved that.'

He fights a laugh down. This is one of those situations where you have to either laugh or scream and he doesn't want to laugh, not for fear of being offensive but that he might not be able to stop. "What was the rally about?"

"About 45 minutes."

He feels that laugh welling up but it'd have to push annoyance out of the way to get out. "Mrs. Lincoln, what was the subject of the rally?"

"She was pushing her new book and having a Signing. She's proven that, believing they can get away with it, 23% of married men will cheat on their wives."

He only thought he was surprised before. "23%? Don't you think that's rather high?"

"She was very compelling. Had some pretty hard arguments."

"Yes, I'm sure she did." But he expects he's heard far better ones in Interrogation. It doesn't sound like something Shav would be interested in.

"Did you know that in the coming twenty years, 34% of marriages will end in divorce, and that of those 82% will be because of marital infidelity?"

"I did not know that." Gibbs' track record aside (75% of his marriages ended in divorce) he has high hopes for celebrating his Golden with Shav, and their grandkids are going to throw the party.

"Believe it."

"I guess I have to." His Rule 11, which he is now coining in the back of his head, will be that to end a conversation, agree with everything the other person says, but he's too tired to put the maxim into practice. "This has been very interesting but I really have to run. Siobhan is holding dinner and I really want to see my n– my daughter." To call her his niece or to mention she's leaving for Utah in the morning would be disastrous. "So if you'll excuse me."

"Of course. I just wanted to say–."

"Oh look, isn't that Mrs. Jones?"

"Where?" she asks, turning about and he practices his disappearing act. Jones is nowhere in sight but by the time the woman realizes that….

'Okay,' he thinks on his way to the elevator, 'I'll ask Shav for absolution later.'

xx

"UNCLE TIM!" The shriek as he gets the door three quarters open gives him a much needed two second warning to prepare for the collision. He's gotten used to falling back to his High School Catcher's position, arms out to catch the three foot tall fast ball and bring her into a hug.

"How's my favorite niece?" She has yet to know she's his only one barring an inevitable surprise call from Sarah, AFTER the one about her getting married and there had best be a year between those two forthcoming calls.

"Aunt Siobhan took me to the bookstore after school!"

"When he releases her and stands up, the only suitable reply is "I can see that." The coffee table before the couch is littered with, not to say buried by, a colorful collection of large books, excepting the three that have fallen to the floor, quite probably in the girl's launch.

By this point his lovely wife is in reach and he helps her the rest of the way and spends some time warming her lips which are suitably warm anyway.

But after too few seconds she pulls those lips away and whispers very softly "A grá, we're being watched."

"Good. Time to learn about a loving marriage." If she did hear this Clare Adams, she needs to see reality. Shav reaches up and drums pinky through index finger to the back of his head, her version of Gibbs' pay attention call. "All right."

"One more night and you get the bed back," she promises. By his own insistence he'd taken the convertible this week, outwardly to be generous but also not forgetting the apartment's thin walls. Further, the bathroom is beyond the bed.

"I'll hold you to that," he whispers, his lips brushing hers.

"I'm sure you will," she says with a discrete bump of hips before releasing him.

"So," he says, stepping into the living room, "what's with the treasure trove?"

"Just a few books for the trip," Siobhan says.

"To Mongolia on foot?" They make plenty of money between his salary and her two, but he's still glad all the books he sees have big green discount stickers plastered to their upper corners.

Bridget sorts through the very unsorted pile that hides the table. "Aunt Siobhan bought me The Thank You Elephant and Piggy Book The Story of Diva and Flea The Day The Crayons Came Home Where the Sidewalk Ends I Wish You More Robo-Sauce The Lornax Five Minute Star Wars Stories Owl Diar –."

"Honey, I have to talk to your aunt for a minute."

"Okay, uncle Tim." They get exactly one step. "Uncle Tim?"

He turns back to her, a glance to Siobhan admitting the inevitable. "Yes, honey?"

"When aunt Siobhan took me to your job and I met aunt Abby, how is aunt Abby my aunt?"

He looks to Shav, his first thought being that he used to date the woman - a long time ago - but Shav wouldn't bring that up. She may flummox him - pretty often - but she always plays the girl straight. And for how well he knows Lenore, she probably never told her daughter about the polite custom of naming any adult who's a friend as aunt this or uncle that. She probably introduces everyone as Mister this or Missus that.

But this is a long conversation, he thinks, and he already has one on hold. "Errr, can I get back to you on that, hon?"

"Okay." Another step managed. "How is uncle Ducky my uncle?"

"I promise."

x

When Shav does lead him into the bedroom and he closes the door, he says "Quite a haul."

"So she came with two suitcases and can leave with three. You should have seen her eyes, probably the only children's books she gets come from Bill. Len probably only buys her text books."

"Not our fight, hon."

"I also bought her next year's calendar, but told her to ask her father to hang it in her room."

"A calendar?" Why should that be an issue? "Ohhh, a _calendar_."

"Mmm hmm."

In the kitchen hangs a calendar from the Mayo Photographic Club, beautiful full page images of Ireland and this month isn't August, it's Lúnasa. "Shav, don't you think–"

"Like you said, hon, it's not _our_ fight," which he translates to mean 'drop it and stay happy'. He'll gladly stay out from between the sisters; he's had too much of getting between them in High School. She goes over to the bed to turn down Bridget's side. When the girl goes in at seven, at least they'll have the rest of the evening. "But when we see Lenore and Bill in the morning, I am going to suggest they have her lungs checked. She has a fine future either as an Opera singer," she turns about, "or an Auctioneer."

x

Her expression falls as she reads his. "You're not coming."

"I'm sorry, honey. We have–" He halts at her upraised hand. It does, however, take her nearly twenty seconds to erase the emotion from her face and he gives her the time.

"We agreed long ago," she admits, "that if one of our jobs pulled us away that we wouldn't…." She fights herself to silence. "But dam - darn it, this may be the last time before her wedding."

"I know. I'm sorry, honey."

A burst of effort wipes the emotion off her face, leaving a too placid mask. "As we agreed, I'm not blaming…." comes out toneless.

He takes out his BlackBerry, powers it down, goes to her night table and sets the landline to mute. "I am home for the evening, and the night."

" _A mhuirnín,_ " to which 'uh wúr-neen' he hears 'darling', "I'm not blaming you. God, if I don't know how important your job is then no one does."

x

x

She's forced herself to silence and he has to change the subject. "Dot Lincoln waylaid me before I made it to the front door. She told me she saw you at some rally this afternoon?"

"Not a rally, a book pushing at B&N. They had the signing and speech set up right next to the Children's section, why I don't know. So while Bridget read a few things sitting on a small chair we were lucky to snag, I listened."

"How was it?"

She gives him a slow smile and suddenly he wants to duck. Instead he goes to his bureau to secure his weapon. "Pretty interesting. Clare Adams, who wrote the book, says that 23% of married men, if they believe they can get away with it, will cheat on their wives."

"That's awfully cynical."

"Maybe. I don't know."

"Well," he says as he places the Sig in the lock box and sets that at the back of the drawer, "it must be good to know that I'm in the 77%." Her silence makes him look back and he doesn't care for her troubled eyes. "Well, come on, you don't think _I_ would, do you?"

"How do I know what you do Wednesday through Monday? I'm only there on Tuesdays and you have all these cases. Beautiful suspects, gorgeous young witnesses; remember that Bikini Contest you told me about a couple of years ago? What about that nymphomaniac Catherine Reynolds in Bethesda, who tried to take a swan dive into your boxers? And another redhead too? What about Susan Grady from Polygraph who faked results so you'd have to take the test again? What about Brenda Carter at that Women's Prison who climbed you like a koala up a eucalyptus tree?"

"The one who threw up on my Ermenegildo Zegnas on our graduation night from FLETC?"

"Did you see her again when you went back to interview McFadden?"

" _No_!" If he'd had any idea his innocent foibles had affected her like this he'd never have told her such stories.

"My point is if you were sleeping around I'm that _last_ one anyone would tell."

He closes the drawer. "Come on. I would never _cheat_ on you."

"I don't know, a _mhuirnín, a_ proven 23% is very compelling."

Silly. 'Proven 23?' He crosses back to her. "Sweetness, you're a priest. You see the good in people."

"You have no _idea_ what I see. I see the seamy side too, the things no one ever wants anyone else to know, all of which I must keep secret. If you knew the things I've Absolved people of over the years you'd run shrieking from the building."

"Come on."

"Come on yourself. Temptation is out there and it's 24/7/365. It's insidious, and the only ones who think they're above it are those who lie to themselves more than to others. You're no exception."

"I'm not?" he asks, longing for a way to play the mounting torrent down.

"Look at who you work with. Abby jumped your boner days after you got there, and you did it in her _coffin_. Then she was fighting for you for months after _she_ broke it off until you and Ziva broke up. How do I know you two didn't make up?"

" _What_?"

"That's to say nothing of you working opposite a former lover you were _dhéanamh grá do_ every chance you got for months since last June, and now Jethro sits between you to keep you two separated."

x

He gapes at her, finally has to declare that "I don't believe we're having this conversation."

"You two used to take breaks _at work_ together at the top of the stairwell behind that _still_ broken Emergency door. But I forgave you because you stopped not long after we got married."

"Not _LONG_?"

"Who can be sure?"

"Ziva and I broke up _before_ you and I started dating!" How can she possibly misremember this?

"Because she doesn't share any more than I do. And yet you also work right next to, and go out into the field 'partnered' with, another woman you've slept naked with," she bites, her voice low and intense.

" _Huh_?" This is insane. "I _never_ slept naked with Michelle."

"What about when you _say_ you were trapped in that sauna?"

" _We weren't_ –" He cuts his voice down, mindful of the girl outside. "We Weren't Naked. She had her bra and panties on."

"And you were in your boxers."

"We weren't asleep, we were passed out from the heat!"

"Oh yeah?" she challenges, not raising her voice but her words are a whip snap. "And what were you doing that made you both so hot?"

This is insane. "We were writing 'goodbye' notes to you and Jimmy."

"You had her in her bra and panties, you in your boxers, get hot and suddenly you're writing me a 'Dear Jane' note? A _Note_?"

"I DON'T BELIEVE THIS!" She waves him to be quiet. " _We didn't do anything_!"

"Have you any _idea_ how many couples I've counseled, young lovers who 'hadn't done anything' but the girls were pregnant and now _she's_ preg– Oh my God, _do I have to demand a paternity test_?"

" _NO_!"

x

Looking at the horror and outrage on his face she sputters and bursts into laughter, so much so that she must sit down on the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry, a thaisce," she says when she can force a breath, calling him 'uh hásh-keh', my treasure, which takes much of the sting out, "of course I don't believe any of that nonsense." She manages to fight the laughter down. "I know everything that happened that day, from you, from Michelle, from James, Ducky and so many others. I have never doubted you. I know you'd never cheat on me."

" _Thank_ you." He's relieved to realize he's been had - again - though he doesn't appreciate the scare. Sometimes his wife's humor can be daunting because he Always falls for it.

He pulls her up and into a hug and she assures him that "I have absolute trust in you. Always did." They hug more tightly and kiss most thoroughly, but he'll settle this score with her some time after Bridget goes home. "Plus," she tells him as she pulls back from his lips, "you're so deeply into your computers."

This stops him and he pulls back, still held in her arms. "Huh?"

"Well, if you ever _did_ try to cheat on me, I'd make certain that you got that Lorena Bobbit virus."

"Lorena Bobbit virus?"

"You know the one, it turns your hard drive into a three and a half inch floppy."

He's too flummoxed to say anything so she kisses him.


	2. Unclosed Cases

Chapter Two  
Unclosed Cases

At 0813 on Saturday morning Abby Sciuto, not ready to start this morning on the Ballistics analysis of bullets Jimmy had brought up, the first two of what would ultimately be eighteen bullets, all in aid of a case for a Lance Corporal whose killing is being investigated by John Vinchense's team, instead has large headphones upon her head. She'd greeted the Apprentice ME, combining enthusiastic hugs with solicitous inspections until he'd fled.

The headphones, plugged into her computer, block all sounds other than those pouring into her ears and she holds her attention on the soft words as she manipulates the control images on her computer screen. The music has gradually been faded and the recording slowed to bring the words down from their rapid clip to where they're intelligible, soft and compelling. They'd sounded better as long blips.

Under original conditions, the MP3 file's music drowns out every word, but that doesn't mean those words aren't heard. They are, but only in the subconscious mind and they never reach the level of awareness. Adjusting the controls on the virtual panel further, she brings the words to greater clarity and turns so she can lean back against the freestanding console to focus–

Her boots actually leave the floor as she screams.

x

She yanks the headphones off her ears, whirls about and lets loose everything she has at the tall man. " _GIBBS, you frightened the life out of me_!"

"Sorry." But he doesn't sound sincere.

McGee, even Tony, she'd punch in the chest, but Gibbs, no, never. Besides, she needs both hands for her own chest because at eight in the morning she does not need _this_.

"What's up that you're here on a Saturday morning when I was feeling so good?"

"Why are you feeling good?"

"What's the matter, Gibbs, don't you want me to feel good?"

"Abs."

She decides to have mercy on him even if he hadn't on her. It's too early on a day off for this, not when they're both in so she can target him later for some real fun. "Sammy's better."

"She checked herself out of the hospital the other day."

As if she needed a reminder. "Yeah, but she wasn't better. She was really depressed. Miserable. Sad. Gloomy. Dole–"

"I get the picture."

"–ful."

"You sure we're talking about Sky?" None of those adjectives fit the woman who seems to be, at her most restrained, almost explosively happy.

"She wasn't the other day, I don't know who she was, but today she snapped out of it. I spoke to Michelle, she says Jimmy was the same way, then I spoke to Grantwood and she confirmed it about Benes. I sent you an email."

"You know better."

"Yes. Well, everyone's recovered, Jimmy passed my inspection, though Sammy has to push back her week at BARF for a while but I have much more data to study about why this formula has this particular downside."

"Good."

"Yes, I can see you're thrilled."

"Solve this case for me, I'll be thrilled."

"Thought I was solving your case."

"You are. But we're going to Life Source. We're meeting with Captain Kotzain and his Exec, Lieutenant Lewiston."

"Sounds like a fun way to spend a Saturday."

"We know the How, but we need to find out Why someone hit Benes – and Sky – and Palmer – and almost you. The answers are there."

"I want first dibs."

"No promises." Beyond Palmer and Sky, unintended victims of the missed hit, the families of the two dead perps - puppets - are the ones he would give the first dibs to when it comes to settling scores.

x

"What's up now?" she asks, trying to move beyond emotion and back into Science. "You just take a detour to blast my heart through my sternum?"

"Tony's bringing down the Task Force, but I wanted to make sure you're ready to help out with the Super Secret Science Stuff."

"Super Secret Science Stuff, sure, I love alliteration. To meet a bunch of interlopers, not so much."

"Interlopers?"

She doesn't care for his amused tone. Just because he doesn't use a word like 'interlopers' doesn't mean the sobriquet isn't deserved. So okay, forget moving away from emotion. "You guys finally get Read into this 'Project Life Source' after triple-talk and High Government 'Need-to-Know' dinkhinky and the first thing the Joint Chiefs do is force agents from the other Agencies on us who'll piggyback NCIS' Investigation. It's not fair, Gibbs."

"Tell me about it." She opens her lips. "On second thought, don't."

"Good call. I'd probably say something they'll regret." The rapid beeps over the outer sliding door alert her to the intruders' arrival and she turns, ready to give them both barrels. The first woman through the door blasts her aggravation into the Anacostia. _"HEYYYY, Abby._ "

"Hey, Abby," Special Agent Abigail Borin, CGIS, greets her and has to brace for the charge on too high black and red boots that ends in a hug.

"Hollis!" Army CID Colonel Hollis Mann gets her own hug, then Abby turns to, and is halted momentarily at, the decorated white uniform shirt and the Air Force Lieutenant within it.

"Frank Oswald," the OSI Agent says, extending his hand, but one does not shake hands with Abby Sciuto. She pulls the tall man into his own hug.

"Hi, Frank," she says when she releases him.

"You've now had your Official NCIS Welcome," Tony DiNozzo quips, inching a little closer to the woman.

"You want something, DiNozzo?"

"Well, since you mention it, I was kind of feeling left out."

"Hi, Tony," she says and turns from him to her two old friends and one new one.

x

Tony grants her a point as she launches into a rapid Catch Up and Meet Up and he counts the seconds before Gibbs calls them to work.

"What've you got, Abs?"

He had reached 15 and wonders if the man had counted too.

She recrosses the room to him. "In addition to Ballistics analysis for John Vinchense's team who didn't draw weekend duty so Ducky, Palmer and I are doing their work–"

"How is Palmer?" Tony asks into Abby's mounting annoyance. This would be his first day in, a Saturday to come off sick time in a straight jacket in a padded room, but he'd been tied up and hadn't seen Michelle before being corralled for escort duty.

"Much better, or so he seems. I saw him this morning when he brought up the eighteen bullets. I'm still praying." She returns her attention to her Silver Zorro. "I'd been working on the MP3 player which Elizabeth McFadden had on her when she was arrested," she picks up the large headphones, "when you blew my heart out of my chest." She pauses as though expecting an apology, but Gibbs doesn't show weakness. "I don't know whether she knew, or even ever caught on. I suspect they duplicated her player because she's too smart - was too smart - to just accept a CD player when she was programming people with CDs - that she was being programmed as thoroughly as her victims. But each and every song on this thing, and that's 859, contains the same instructions, sped up to the point that only the brain hears what the ears do not perceive. It's kind of like Max Headroom Blipverts, only not quite that fast. I guess they didn't want her head to explode though I'd've paid to see it. The instructions repeat an average of 8 times per song so if she listened to the whole run that'd be 6,872 times, more than enough to train her."

"How many times you figure it ran?"

"No way to be sure. That many songs, figuring an average of three minutes per song, long I know but that's just a guesstimate, it would take her 1.789583 days to run through the repertoire. But if your theory is right and they started programming her before she started programming her victims - and the MP3 player was a good choice because no way would she listen to anything but store-bought CDs, so they probably had to get a hold of her unit and do a _massive_ amount of work - it was probably hitting her for months stroke years, so it'd be a lot with a capital 'OT'. Or maybe a load with a capital ODE."

"What is all this?" Borin asks.

x

"About a year ago," Tony says, "Psychiatrists Samuel Richards and Elizabeth McFadden had been two of a still unknown number of people who were programming Military Dependents, mostly wives, to kill the ones they loved most, presumably their spouses, and then do themselves in."

Hollis says nothing. She'd been in on the case from the beginning and looks content to let him carry the ball.

"Richards was killed, we think, because he was caught jumping the gun, whoever was behind the plot hadn't been ready to go public, as it were. We were brought in because the first killings were pretty spectacular, but before we put everything together whoever's in charge dusted Richards." He endures the looks from his fellows with good grace.

"McFadden we found out about because one of the people she'd programmed was our Chaplain."

"McGee's wife?" Borin asks.

That had been enough of a horrible day, coming months before O'Mallory and McGee had been married.

ooo

" _Gibbs_ , _Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs_!" Abby had cried, running into the bullpen in typical excitement minutes after McGee and O'Mallory had returned from the climax of a Blackmail case, "you've gotta _see_ this! Hi, Siobhan, congratulations."

"Thanks," she'd answered, barely keeping up with the 'Caf-Pow!'-energized woman. The Undercover case had marked her first and decidedly last time as a very unofficial Field Agent.

"See what, Abs?" Gibbs had asked, trying to keep her focused. He didn't bother to try to rein her in; too much work with a poor record of success.

"Remember when I broke the programming on all those brainwash disks you confiscated from Sam Richards' patients?"

It had only been a few weeks ago. "What did you find?"

"Well, I'm done examining every one of them. I had to be sure there were no variations in the coup d'état. Coup d'état, I love that word. Those words."

"Abby." He hadn't reined her in, his own fault.

"Once you filter out all the hinky music which is supposed to send you into La-La Land, you're left with a series of progressively worsening suggestions that ultimately become directions. They're so low and so fast the ears can't hear them - but the brain does. Stage One starts out nice and mellow, a bit of resentment, a bit of aggravation, but by the end of a few hours of it you're ready to hurt somebody. It goes on over and over all night, every time you try to sleep.

"Later versions reinforce the need; you actually get _addicted_ to the music and you've got to keep coming back to it. That's why I was having so many problems, I came in in the middle of the program, so to speak. Outwardly you're fine, you're programmed to act like nothing's going on, but inside you're turning into a brainwash junkie."

DiNozzo had been about to interject a movie title, Gibbs had been ready and silenced him with an upraised hand.

"They get worse as you go along," Abby said with a 'thank you' Sign gesture to Gibbs, "but every single one of them contains the kill command. You're supposed to kill the one you love the most, presumably your husband or wife who's in the Service, then do _yourself_ the same way. Murder-suicide was supposed to eliminate witnesses that could trace the plot back. Even if the subject can't self-terminate then and there, he or she is to do it as soon as possible.

"The instructions get more specific as the disks are switched one for another, presumably as Richards got to know more and more about you, but even 'Stage One' will be enough to make you kill on command if you listen to it often enough."

"Abby." He didn't say 'get to the point', his tone did.

"Well, every one of them had the very same kill command - all but _one_."

x

This news was as significant as it was unpleasant, and no one had to work too hard to reach the same conclusion. "Another Doctor?"

"That's my guess too, but how could it happen that one of the disks wound up in the group Richards had?"

"DiNozzo, David, check the histories of every patient, did anyone see anyone else but Richards? McGee, get back on that secret pocket thingy in his computer, tear it apart until you find something. Lee, you and I are going out to interview this woman with the different disk," he turns to Abby, "who is it?"

"Mrs. Ann West, her husband's Major Tom West, Army."

Gibbs had pulled out his cell phone. He'd wanted Col. Hollis Mann of Army CID in on this one from the top.

x

DiNozzo had one last concern before leaping into the work. "What about this command? Could it be triggered accidentally?"

"Nope. Just like Richards' bunch, the code words are so obscure you'd never hear them these days. They're from pairs of children's cartoons from years and years ago. They probably don't run them anywhere but in the Museum of Broadcasting. He used 'Courageous Cat and Yogi Bear'. This other one is 'Secret Squirrel and Batfink'."

"Well done, Abby," Gibbs said, "get–"

Tim felt the tug of his Sig being yanked out of its holster from behind. He whirled and felt his blood turn to ice.

Siobhan, a terrible, blank-eyed stare locked upon him, held the gun inches from his face.

Abby's whisper was loud in the stillness. "Oh _crap._ "

ooo

Siobhan had tried to fire but fortunately, as a Priest, her life had left her virtually ignorant of the workings of guns, particularly in the use of the safeties. While she'd strained under the merciless compulsion to pull the trigger, Tony and Gibbs had taken her down to the carpet without hurting her, then Abby had started a process of reprogramming, but it had been a nerve wracking time for all of them, particularly for McGee.

Had Siobhan succeeded, she'd have immediately killed herself and they would have been no closer to answers.

"We recently learned, the very hard way," Abby picks up, "that whoever is out there supplying these CDs changed their modus operandi so that whether the programmed people carried out their missions or not, if they were caught they would terminate themselves.

"McFadden had a slightly different provision in her programming. She was fine until the moment she decided to finger the one in charge, then she suicided."

"Sounds like you have your hands full," Oswald commiserates.

"You don't know the half of it yet," Tony assures him.

"But we're on another case here," Gibbs reminds them with stern tone, then turns to "Abby, I just wanted a fast meet and greet before we head out for the NRL."

Abby scowls. The Naval Research Lab is not only the site of Life Source, it's where the primary work on the hijacked USS Millennium had been done, and this aside from the coincidence that the first chief suspect in the assault on Special Agent Janet Levy had hailed from there. "That place is doing too much business with us, and as far as I'm concerned there's too many Operations going on."

"Operation: Life Source," Tony gripes, "Operation: Dragonfire, Operation: Millennium, I'd call down Operation: Annihilate on all of them."

"Love to," Mann says.

xxx

Saturday before dawn is too early for so long a drive south into Virginia. It took over four hours to make the deplorable trip to Naval Station Norfolk, 200 miles along I-564 to the main gate, though Kevin Lamb and Lisa DuBois had spotted one another on the drive. They'd started at 0415 from the Navy Yard so they could use their own cars to return to their homes, living as they do in opposite directions from HQ. Once at Norfolk they'll have to make their way through Base Security to the sacrosanct Bunker #1, the super-secret domain of the Scientists in charge of projects deemed essential to National Security, but Lamb wants to accomplish this by 0900.

Gibbs and his team, in his briefing to them yesterday after the 1600 change from Alpha to Beta shifts, had related how that team had investigated the mysterious 'Operation Dragonfire', beginning with an MTAC Conference with Dr. Mark Shaw, the man they're on their way to see. It was then that they'd learned the amazing secret of the Photon Density Converter, a device that could, by the application of physics far in advance of Laymen, convert the nearly - that was the crux - mass-less particles of light into something more solid. It doesn't take much of a change at all, not with force being a function of mass times speed, to turn a minuscule amount of matter moving at 186,252 miles per second into a cataclysmic force.

But why?

ooo

"The initial purpose of the project is as a response to the threat of 1950 DA," Shaw had told Gibbs' team from the big MTAC screen, the black scientist's face stark above a white lab coat and backed by a white wall.

This answer, even being the second time they'd heard it, remained quite uninformative.

"Predictions are that of all the N.E.O.'s that pose a threat to Earth, 1950 DA's is the most probable."

By that time Gibbs never impressive patience had worn out. " _What_ is an N.E.O?"

"Sorry, that's 'Near Earth Object'."

"And you couldn't have _said_ so?" Gibbs had turned to his ad hoc Scientific Advisor in the hope that he could put _this_ garbage into something intelligible. DiNozzo has called McGee 'a walking compendium of the obscure' and Gibbs had related that he was frequently glad of it.

"As the Earth orbits the sun," McGee had explained, "it crosses the paths of asteroids, most following eccentric elliptical orbits about the sun. It does this every year with no problem. Meteor strikes are a daily occurrence, but the vast majority, even those as big as automobiles, burn up in the atmosphere - shooting stars - or at least lose so much of their mass that they pose no threat. 1950 DA, however, _does_ pose a significant potential threat. It's a kilometer in diameter and won't burn up completely."

"So?"

"When it does hit, it'll strike with a force equivalent to 50,000 Hiroshima-type bombs. When Mount Saint Helens blew, the ash traveled to cover most of the western states. _This_ will probably blot out the sun all over the Earth for months, possibly years. If it hits in the ocean, the tsunami that will spread over much of the planet will be about a _mile_ high. By comparison, the tsunami that devastated most of the countries bordering the Indian Ocean the day after Christmas 2004 was a hundred feet."

"What are the chances of this rock hitting us?" he'd demanded, preferring enemies he could capture and, if necessary, shoot.

"In 2032, about 0.5 percent. It'll increase in statistical probability over 50 year intervals and become a theoretical certainty in 2880."

"2880?" They were planning for a disaster in _800 years_?

"March 17."

"That'll screw up the parades," DiNozzo had quipped.

x

Gibbs' caustic reply was cut off by the voice of the black man behind him, making him turn back to the screen. "That risk in 2032 of 1 in 200 is considered too high to sit back and do nothing. Our project was one of several assigned to come up with a viable solution. We decided fifteen years ago that rockets carrying nuclear warheads were out of the question, not only because of limitations of range but the possibility of irradiating vast areas of the Earth from very literal fallout.

"Furthermore, if we did not accomplish complete destruction or at least significant disruption of the target, the new courses of any material large enough to pose a significant threat could outstrip our resources. Something might get through that was large enough to cause significant loss of life. Our mandate doesn't allow this possibility as an option. We are charged to destroy the target completely before it gets in range of rockets or conventional weapons.

"The PDC Mark 9 is capable of numerous shots at immense distances. Where a rocket would take days or weeks to deliver its payload at a sufficient distance to assure Earth's safety, this weapon can reach it in minutes. The sun is 93 million miles away. Its light takes 6 minutes to reach us. While the effective range of the PDC has yet to be determined through practical tests, since the photons would now be subject to physical laws of motion and energy that were insignificant to that point, we estimate the effective range for practical targeting to be 5.2387 AUs and all we need is 'line of sight' targeting."

"All right, you've convinced me this is a good thing." He wasn't going to ask what an AU was, he'd learned that later from McGee without having risked fifty sentences. "So why were two of your most senior scientists and your top man's wife murdered?"

ooo

That had formed the crux of that team's Investigation so many months ago, and their wrapping it up after the death toll had reached six should have been the end. But if Bachman, Esposito and Cintron had worked together only on that project, Lamb and DuBois are going to start with the assumption that the disappearances are related to the PDC.

Shaw seems to think so.

The most likely prospect they have, if this is a PDC case, is that John Carson had copied all the files related to the science of the weapon and Carson is now far out of NCIS' reach.

Through an act far beyond simple underhandedness, the Scientist had been confiscated immediately after being captured and he, and his information, are Vanished.

Lamb feels that he, a devout Methodist, has a greater chance of being elected Pope than NCIS has of ever again laying hands upon Carson.

"And if we must go through Parker?" Lisa asks, referring to the Base Commander, whose duties are entirely separate from the scientists'. Bunker #1 sits inside the Station but that is the limit of the Navy / Marine connection with it. The Facility is a Pentagon entity, administered directly by them. Base personnel guard the Bunker, but no one without a PhD ever gets inside it.

"Well then, Blondie, you'll need to charm him into expediting things rather than slowing them down."

"Funny. If I couldn't charm him with raven hair, I'm not going to charm him as a blonde."

She supposes she has only herself to blame for the teasing. She'd left at 1600 on Thursday with black hair and walked in yesterday morning with blonde; a professional job that had taken half the evening and she had secretly enjoyed Kev's efforts all day not to be caught looking at her.

Now not so much.

"I don't know," he counters. "Don't they say 'blondes have more fun'?"

"You know who says that?"

"Who?"

"Not blondes."

#/#/#/#/#

Author's Notes: For background on the case of the hypnodisks, see my First Season stories 'John 8-7' and 'Swiss Knife'. For information on the PDC/9 and Gibbs' team's investigation, see the earlier Season One story 'Fantasy Affair'.


	3. Needed to Know Sooner

Chapter Three  
Needed to Know Sooner

Siobhan McGee, Bridget Morehouse's small hand firmly in hers, three suitcases at her feet instead of the original two, scans the crowded Terminal of Reagan Airport for signs of her sister and brother-in-law. The huge Arrivals Board had announced their plane a few minutes ago and it's reasonable that even in a crowd such as this she'd be able to spot the pair first but it's a stunningly high pitched shriek beside her hip that makes her wince as it proclaims that her supposition had no relation to reality.

" _MOMMY_! _DADDY_!"

Siobhan glances down, opening her mouth to pop her ears and hoping her hearing will soon return, and at her niece's wild waving she redirects her gaze forty degrees left to the couple approaching from a less crowded area. Foolish her, looking for the pair where passengers are discharging through the gate; this is her sister she's dealing with.

She holds Bridget's hand against her frantic tugging as long as she can to prevent a mad charge through the people passing at a hundred angles but, after a tug to snatch the girl's attention, she releases her only when her parents are ten feet away. The girl seems to blink from one spot to the next and the greeting is as enthusiastic as everything else that surrounds the six year old. Her niece, who is determined to relate every experience she's had in the past week simultaneously, so frequently lives at such a heightened sense of reality that she'd actively avoided introducing the girl to the perennially ecstatic Samantha Sky, truly fearful of the result.

x

Her reunion with Lenore is less epic, though she exchanges hugs and kisses with Bill after he finishes greeting his beloved daughter. She knows well where the girl gets her enthusiastic and positive outlook.

She's interested in hearing about the set-up of the new home in Utah and Bill's job, all of which had been covered on telephone calls each evening this week but face-to-face is always preferable. Last Saturday, while waiting for the arriving plane, she'd found several eateries in the Terminal at which they can catch up in relative quiet while waiting for the plane heading west.

But in the initial moments of the conversation, Bridget tugs at Lenore's hand until, finally, she kneels on one knee and the excited girl whispers into her ear.

"Really?" She tilts her eyes upward. "She says you're a 'Green Lantern'."

'Oh, no.'

"MOMMMM-MYYYYYYYY! I'm not supposed to tell _Anybody_!" Bridget has clearly decided she's mistrusted her mother's discretion. "Green Lantern's a _Secret_ _Identity_!"

"I promise we won't tell," Bill assures her, always more willing to meet his daughter on her level of perceived reality.

"Timmy had a specialty photo made during a Convention we went to back in May, superimposed me in front of a green screen onto a space scene with Saturn in the background. I guess she was more taken by the image than I'd thought." So much for explanations last Saturday and a seemingly normal week, she hadn't disillusioned the child at all. But Bill waves the explanation off as unnecessary. He's a father. More particularly, he's Bridget's father.

"You shouldn't allow her to fill her head with things that aren't real," Lenore admonishes her younger sister.

"Now Len–" Bill begins a rather useless and interrupted attempt.

"Speaking of, where's your husband?" She looks about the crowded Terminal, hardly necessary to do. Timmy had been standing right next to her last Saturday before he'd been pulled back into the thick of things on their Fear Drug case.

Of course, it had given her an opportunity to give Bridget a micro-tour of Headquarters and to introduce her to those agents also trapped on the weekend rotation. She had certainly not neglected to show her darling niece to Abby. That alone had been worth the detour.

She's uncertain, however, how to treat this segue and so decides to ignore it. "He has to work."

"Doesn't that man ever take a day off?"

"Sure he does, but his boss insists that he take them at work."

"He should get a real job, instead of this–"

"SO, kitten, what did you do since Saturday?"

Yes, Bill does indeed know his daughter, for that opening begins an avalanche of words that Siobhan has come to know so well as testament of sharp attention to detail coupled with amazing lung capacity.

x

After the tenth deep breath that brings the rendition up to Sunday, Lenore cuts in: "Sweetheart, I'll be happy to hear all about your vacation, but we have to catch our plane."

" _You're leaving already_?"

"Our flight back boards in less than twenty minutes."

Siobhan, who knows her sister so well, is still stricken speechless. Such a rapid turnover had to have been meticulously planned, and she already knows from her own checks of the schedule that there are eleven Utah bound flights that follow that outgoing plane.

This had happened last Saturday but that had been for a Connecting flight so she'd given her the point, but this is an In-and-Out and she'd looked forward to some time with the only relations she has in America, at least long enough to hear news and to share Bridget's eight days.

She's suddenly not sure if she's saddened or relieved.

x

"Mommy, can aunt Siobhan and uncle Tim come to You-taa to visit?"

But it's Bill who assures her "Of _course_ they can. They're _always_ welcome."

Siobhan notices her sister does not join in the enthusiastic invitation, though Lenore had invited Bridget to DC for this very convenient week for herself. Granted there was work to do in setting up the new home but Lenore–

She pulls back from where this thought had been going, unworthy as it is of her Calling, and focuses on the fun week she and Timmy had had with their niece.

"You're going to love your room," Lenore says instead, trying to keep up the girl's enthusiasm. Handled well, this is never a challenge, yet it seems her sister is always unable to master it.

No, think happy thoughts. God has given them a good week.

"And wait until you see the School you're going to."

'Oh, yes,' Siobhan thinks. 'I'm sure she can wait.'

x

"Well, I guess you should get going," she admits, enunciating carefully to speak past the sharp emotions.

She reads Bill's 'I'm sorry' in his eyes and commiserates with her brother-in-law. Time and distance have not changed her sister other than to increase the latter.

Bridget spins about and clutches her legs, and Siobhan works her way in that loving grip down to her knees and into a proper hug. "I'll miss you, aunt Siobhan."

"I'll miss you too, honey."

"Say goodbye to uncle Tim?"

"Of course." She hopes the smile and tone seem genuine. She's working very hard at them.

Still kneeling, she gently pushes the girl away by her shoulders so she can place her hand upon Bridget's head. Knowing what she's doing, Bridget bows her head, crosses her hands before her in an attitude of utter solemnity such as she doesn't often see even at Saint Mary's. "May God bless y–"

"That's not necessary," Lenore says but she tunes out the words. She's had many years of practice in tuning out her sister. Bridget also looked up but Siobhan whispers a very quiet 'shhhh' and she resumes her respectful attitude. Perhaps her niece has picked up more than she'd expected?

"May God Bless you and keep you. May He send His Angels to precede and follow you, to keep you safe in your travels. May He watch over you in your waking and in your sleeping, in your work and in your play, in your going out and your coming in, and may He ever keep you safe and hold you in the hollow of His hand." With her hand now at the side of the girl's small head, she inscribes upon her forehead with her thumb a small cross. "In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

"Amen," Bill says, his tone a subtle reminder to his daughter.

"Amen."

She stands, not as easy as it would be were the girl not again clinging to her legs. In Bill's eyes she sees understanding, in her sister's annoyance. But she can't leave this moment with so much to say and so little opportunity to say it.

For Bridget's sake, in case it doesn't go well, she uses the Gaelic she and Lenore both learned so well. Their sainted mother had made certain they'd grown up bilingual in this foreign land. "Nuair dá chéim ar aghaidh, is féidir leo teacht le chéile i lár."

Heavy exasperation makes Lenore's shoulders drop hard. "What does that mean?"

That she asks makes her feel so much sadder. "'When both step forward, they can meet in the middle'."

x

Instead, Lenore takes Bridget's hand. "Come, honey. Let go of your aunt and say 'goodbye'. We have to hurry."

The goodbyes are as heartfelt as the hellos had been, and Bridget must be drawn away but Siobhan stands and watches as her family moves off to their destination gate, Bridget waving her arm as though her hand were a Semaphore flag. She smiles and waves back to the girl until it's the sixth and final time.

When the three are lost to sight she whirls away barely in time to clamp her hand over her lips as the tears burst out at the thought of what, at sixteen or twenty-six, Bridget Morehouse may become.

xxx

When Kevin Lamb and Lisa DuBois completed the four hour drive to Norfolk, they elected not to meet yet with Base Commander Captain Steven Parker or even his Exec, Commander Harold Letzkie, preferring to get the facts first hand from Dr. Mark Shaw, head of the Scientists who work out of the 'Top Secret, You'll Never Get Clearance' Bunker #1. The Base and Bunker are independent of one another so the most direct information will come from the Pentagon's Bunker.

Shaw had initiated the request for help, so he's the one to see. Presumably, since he sent for them, he'd let them in.

It had not been a boring drive, most of the conversation had been on the Nationals in general and last night's game in particular. The Nationals are his team. Hers? Well, she's consistent in a way, her team is whichever one is opposing the Nationals today. She frequently strives to drive him up the nearest wall, interesting when in a car as there are no actual walls.

But he always believes, and she'll never admit, that she's a local fan; her knowledge of the team is more comprehensive than that of someone solely motivated by friendly torment.

Still, they had seen the same game and she reveled in pointing out every Nationals low moment and the advances of her team. Today she's a Baltimore Oriels fan yet the Nationals had trounced them 8 to 3 so she'd had an uphill battle in trying to gloat. They'd passed the four hours in one-upmanship and companionable bickering.

Tonight, though she'll never admit this either, she's going to morph into an LA Dodgers fan.

x

Bunker #1, though situated deep inside the base, is as far removed from it as a dwelling can possibly be. From the outside, the guarded facility is exactly what its name implies, but inside the building, which is so protected that usually no one without at least a PhD gets close enough to knock on the door, the first full room they see off the initial corridor is not an ultra-modern laboratory but a wood paneled, leather comfort chair dotted, carpeted room reminiscent of a Harvard Club lounge.

"Is this where our tax dollars are going?" Kevin whispers to Lisa, his words barely reaching her.

"Not entirely," Dr. Mark Shaw, a tall black man in blue suit who met them at the secure entrance, assures him with a smile from thirteen feet away. "This would be more along those lines," he says, removing from his right ear what resembles a half-size blue earwig. "A fifteenth generation amplifier designed for covert operations, such as for soldiers who want to sneak up on someone in the night. It can detect a heartbeat at thirty feet or a whisper at fifty, exactly what the Army wanted it to."

"Impressive," Lamb admits, recalling several situations in which he'd have wished for the device.

"Unfortunately, it has the tendency to puncture eardrums should a bus pass by." His manner hints there were no such actual consequences to test subjects but "still, we keep refining." He puts the device into a small padded box and places that into a pocket. "Won't you sit down?"

There are four extremely comfortable leather chairs draped in faux animal pelts facing two by two across a thick carpet that depicts a pastoral scene in the bookshelf lined room. The essence of the room is quiet elegance but he assures them that "This room is something of an anomaly. The rest of the bunker is the laboratories, Clean rooms, offices and so forth that you've envisioned, but this is our 'get away' room where we can meditate and relax in more familiar surroundings. When you're surrounded by scientists, most of whom are in the Nobel Prize range, it's necessary to have a few diversions."

Lamb is a Yale man but never found the time to frequent Clubs, so he's not going to quibble about the so-called familiar surroundings. DuBois hails from William and Mary but he's never held that against her.

"I understand," he says, preferring these surroundings to what he'd anticipated. He suspects that most of the books on the shelves that surround them would leave him lost in a very few minutes, but he appreciates the fireplace for the winter and especially the air conditioning today. "Now, doctor, if you please."

When seated opposite them, Shaw begins what is undoubtedly a difficult tale. "Last week we finished a secret project, the details of which aren't relevant to this incident–."

"If you don't mind, doctor, unless you have unassailable proof that the disappearances of your scientists are incontrovertibly tied to Operation Dragonfire, we'll make up our own minds about what's relevant."

Lisa forces her lips still, because when Kevin indulges in such terms as 'unassailable' and 'incontrovertibly', it's a broad signal that he's about to do something high handed.

"I wish I could tell you about it, I really do, because I can't prove you're not right, but the matter is Classified, 'Need to –."

"To Know, I know. Is it _possible_ that their disappearance could relate to this recent project?"

"I don't have authority to say."

"I have this fantasy, doctor. I dream that some say one of you eggheads will invent the equivalent of a real life TARDIS, and I'm going to use it to track down the very first person to start this 'Need-to-Know' bullshit and what I'm going to do to him shouldn't happen to a Jihadist."

"Perhaps," Lisa steps in as 'Good Cop', having to admit that Kevin had gotten her to charm Shaw after all, "if you'll tell us what happened, what alerted you to a problem, we could move on from there."

x

"Last Friday, eight days ago, we finished the project I mentioned, and as we had no present commitments I told everyone to take the next week off. As a vacation it came too suddenly for most people to go away, but it was a week off. I did get away for five days to Montana but when I got back I picked up on the preparations. We were supposed to touch base yesterday and coordinate on our next operation so we could start fresh this Monday. Everybody checked in except Catherine Bachman, Mark Esposito and Jeremy Cintron."

"What was the result of your attempts to contact them?" Lamb asks. If Shaw was in Montana - they'll check on that - it probably saved him from suffering the fate of the others, but what fate and at whose hands?

"We failed on every phone number, email, we texted them, even used the emergency contact for Jeremy - his girlfriend. Nothing. That's when we contacted you."

The assignment had been given them at End of Shift yesterday, but Beta and Gamma had looked into the matter and had hit the same brick wall Shaw had, which was why the pre-dawn start and four hour drive south.

Lamb wishes Virginia Police could have been contacted to at least swing by the missing scientists' homes, it would have saved hours. Damn 'Need to Know' when the only ones who _do_ know anything are the bad guys.

"And the only project the three of them had worked on was Dragonfire, aside from this mysterious other thing?"

"Yes, but of this 'mysterious other thing', everyone on that project checked in except Bachman, Esposito and Cintron."

If he's right and there is a connection to the PDC/9, this is really bad. One thing that had struck Lamb from the conversation with Gibbs was how Carson, when he'd initially disappeared, had been found to have copied the files of the Dragonfire Project. Depending upon if they were complete, and if he were running things he'd have held something back, with these the weapon could be recreated. Had it been?

First step, he decides, is to limit potential casualties. "All right, I want you to pull in all those people you have left _and_ their families and dependents."

"Families–"

"Put them up in Base Housing, anywhere. And give us the addresses of those three. Plus that girlfriend if you have it." He hopes 'Need to Know' and 'Classified' don't extend to these, otherwise they'll hear the breaking of those rules all the way up in DC.

xxx

At DC's Naval Research Lab, when he'd first seen the four women and four men approach upstairs at the outer layer of security, Captain Patrick Kotzain had greeted them with "I wasn't expecting eight of you."

What he'd been besieged with was a collection of uniforms from six black caps and field jackets, one inconsistent with the other five in the four letters to an Army fatigue uniform to a bemedaled white shirt. They're all strangers and he wants to keep them that way.

"Special occasion, you get the best," the oldest man had thought he'd assured him. This is one of the men who wears a black cap with white letters, a black jacket with gold badge and Federal Agent lettering and he doesn't give a damn about any message.

Kotzain was not assured and remains very much displeased as they approach the elevator. It was only last evening when he'd presided over a decidedly unsatisfactory demonstration of Project Life Source before a mixed gaggle of Navy and Marine scrambled eggs whose reports would eventually lead to more or less funding, who had been fully re-vetted and were at least military. Now he must open his doors to six civilians and to two officers, the highest of which being only a bird Colonel, to come in and snoop around. The only other Officer is only a Lieutenant.

But if what they said is true, not only is the Project an open book to some unknown enemy but that enemy is responsible for taking down his former commander.

He'd been XO to Captain Tom Benes and now Tom remains laid up and off Clearance and he's now Project Director. And ever since taking over - that few days ago? - his life has been one bad revelation after another.

Now these eight people, by combined order of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are above the heart of Project Life Source and he must bring them down into that heart.

He'd made them give up cell phones and any other recording devices and to submit to searches, but when M.P. Stanowitz had gotten to the taller of two women with the jet black hair, she'd asked if he was fond of his fingers. Stanowitz had admitted to being attached to them, a horrible pun that hadn't improved his mood, and had radioed for a female Marine, something he should have done when he first saw the four women approaching his station. It had delayed progress which he hadn't wanted to commence.

These people are here with orders to find out what's going on, what happened to Benes (which he does want to know) and how these breaches of security affect not only this Project but the famous National Security as well. And he's here with orders to open the Project to people who certainly will never rank highly enough to earn for themselves the Clearances needed to learn so much as the name.

Of course it's the Joint Chiefs of Staffs' Order, but if answers as to where the leak is and what happened to Benes and his Aide Private Court are not forthcoming, no Joint Chief's head will roll.

x

"What happened to Tom Benes?" he asks the chief agent, Gebbs.

"He was poisoned," is evidently all the man intends to say and it's so clear that the familiar 'Need-to-Know' still works in both directions. He'd resigned himself last week to knowing that he'll be informed of the details in the Pentagon's, not in God's, good time. He trusts only that he'll get straighter, more complete and much more credible answers from God.

But such is life, and he has his orders, to reveal the unrevealable to strangers.

He leads them into the elevator, takes a ring of keys from his pocket and, as the door closes, he inserts a key into a lock and, beside his hand, the emergency phone door opens. He presses a series of numbers on the panel and the car begins to descend. He hangs up the receiver.

"If I had not pressed the correct sequence, eight gas jets in the eight corners would fill this car with nine parts per hundred of saran gas in under fifteen seconds."

"Impressive," the Army CID Colonel says, not sounding pleased.

"Damn scary," is the tall civilian's - Danazzio's - vote.

It's always been his too.

"You can see, can you not, how difficult it would be to infiltrate this operation."

The older man doesn't admit a yes.

"How far down are we going?" the dark haired woman - Xena Daneed – asks. They'd been introduced but he's already forgotten three quarters of their names – the Army and Air Force agents wear theirs upon their shirts.

"Nine hundred meters."

"Is this a bad time," Air Force Agent Lieutenant Oswald says, "to mention I get claustrophobic?"

"If you think it's tight now, just wait."


	4. Life Force

Chapter Four  
Life Force

False to his contention - he'd been working off grouchiness - the entryway to the control area is tight but long, a switchback of corridors designed to increase security should a hostile force somehow get this far. The corridors extend for a hundred feet, cut sharply left to run back eighty, then reverse right back down that eighty and have less space than needed for two to walk abreast, but it's what's behind the door at the end of the last long, guarded corridor that's impressive and, until today, both jealously and effectively guarded.

He leads the eight intruders down the final corridor, not caring if they'd discerned or missed the machine gun emplacement behind them.

When he brings them single file through the door at the end he sees that they're impressed by the Life Source chamber, perhaps not as much as they ought to be but that will change.

Each of nine levels extending to their right contains eight stations of a type unseen outside NASA's Main Mission Control, one wide step for each level as a climb to the top. The elevation at the top behind the last group is only ten feet higher than the door through which they'd entered, but from the upper level they'll be shown the huge screen which dominates the room, forty feet wide by thirty five high. Lieutenant Lewiston awaits them and his expression is suitably baleful.

Kotzain reaches the platform behind the ninth row of technicians ahead of his guests and waits until they're all on the level before he extends his hand over the heads of the technicians, his gesture taking in them and the tremendous screen. "Ladies and Gentlemen: _Project Life Source_."

"What's it do?" the gray haired group leader asks.

'This guy really sucks the drama out of the moment.'

x

Receiving a nod from Lewiston that all is well - it had better be - he commences the presentation, which is virtually verbatim what he'd said yesterday. These people don't deserve a new script.

It starts with a five mile diameter view, then zooms in and slides to cover the distant Navy Yard so the men and women can compare what's on the wall screen with what they know to be so.

He sees in their reactions that they're impressed and the successful demonstration continues until they focus on this room. The seventy two technicians arranged before the screen and the ten men and women at the top of the screen are represented now by foot wide lights. He asks Xena to make the trip down the steps to the door and back up to demonstrate the lock, mostly because he likes to watch her walk.

When she returns the group has spread out so each is read individually. Until then, things had gone so well.

Of all the lights on the screen, one near the top is a third brighter than the rest so it stands out quite distinctly. Kotzain looks to the group surrounding him, it's easy to pick out the petite Asian woman as the shining exception. "Excuse me, Agent…?"

"Palmer."

He tries to think of what reason could account for the increased intensity, having already rejected radiation and a score of other reasons. "Are you…." So many things rejected as not applicable, having long ago been ruled out, he's not sure where to go with the young woman. "Your Life Force is so much more intense than the others."

"Well... I'm pregnant," is the only guess she can make.

He frowns, considers this, but "We've never specifically tested this on a pregnant woman, but it shouldn't give this reading."

She shrugs. "I don't know from that. You ask me why my 'Life Force', as you call it, is stronger than the others' and I tell you I have a bun in the oven. It's up to you to figure out why."

He turns to the closest technician. "Sergeant Thayer, do a close scan on Agent Palmer."

The image shoots outward to the exclusion of the other observers, the aspect rotates and her silhouette glows upon the screen, thirty feet high, while those closest to her are visible in part on the right and left edges. At the angle presented, her radiant body is definitely brighter than any other, but there is no central point of effulgence.

" _What are you doing_?" she crosses her hands over her uterus and the tremendous image in bright silhouette does the same.

"Trying to see if the–."

"No _Way_! You tell me you don't know how this thing works and you focus it on my Baby? No! Turn it off! _Gibbs_!"

"Turn it off." Gibbs' command is more effective for its quiet determination.

"Shut down," Kotzain orders. A moment later the screen goes dark. "I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"Experiment on a Navy woman. Better yet, don't experiment _at all._ "

Kotzain turns to his XO. "Lieutenant Lewiston, schedule a series of tests, let's see what did cause this."

"Aye, sir."

"Ladies and gentlemen," he keeps his voice under tight control but doesn't really care if anyone can read his seething anger or not. After months of very satisfying progress, now there've been two unexpected anomalies in two days, and so far they haven't finished identifying the last problem let alone determining a solution. "If you'll come with me, we can continue in the Conference Room."

The room is more than sufficient to accommodate nine and has the further advantage of not being here.

As he leads the men and women to the right steps, his eyes back to the group, he keeps a peripheral view of Pamler. The small woman is looking at each station as they pass with an expression of intense distrust and this time he can't bring himself to blame her.

xxx

The eight intruders seat themselves at the large table and Kotzain assumes his place at its head, a set of pull down screens hanging from their rollers behind him.

"Gentlemen, Ladies, you now know more than most Generals and Admirals do about Project Life Source. Everyone connected with this project has been thoroughly Vetted and Re-Vetted, the most recent time being in response to the incident involving the USS Millennium. Our Security is the tightest of any Military Research and Development Lab in the world. Each and every man and woman connected with this project understands its need for Secrecy–"

"What about former personnel?"

The older man's interruption throws him off. "I beg your pardon?"

"Your project is six years in since construction began, Captain. You saying in all this time you've had no turnover? At all?"

"No, of course not. There's been some transfers out, new people to replace them but–"

"When was the last time your former people were Vetted?"

"Agent Gibbs, I have–"

"No idea."

Colonel Mann sits forward. "They go from here and off your radar, is that what you're saying, Captain?"

"They go onto someone else's radar."

"How many people we talking about, Captain?" the Coast Guard woman, Bourne, asks.

"Nine."

"We'll need their files," the old man, Gabbs, says.

"I can give you what we have, up to the day each left."

"DiNozzo: you, David and Oswald have them. McGee: you, Palmer and Borin have the key personnel here, interview every–"

This is too much. "Everyone here has already been Vet–"

Old man's pissed, he turns on the fire hose. "Someone's months ahead of us on this thing and took out your top man. Rule Number 63: 'Complicit until proven innocent'."

"Don't see how you can get that to work."

"My people are used to hard work, Skipper."

"Gibbs?" Xena asks permission before cutting in. Has he got his people trained or what? (Or would it be housebroken?) At his open hand gesture, she takes the floor. "Do you have these people in your system like you do me?"

"We would. Everyone here is in the system."

"What about a map? Could you find them on a map?"

"We'll have angle and distance. We can locate them." It would be an excellent test, since some of them have been out of mind for months. Suddenly he's not hating these guys as much as he was.

"Let's do it, Skipper," the boss says.

"This way."

x

Gibbs, through the conference, continually read fear and apprehension in Palmer's eyes, something he hasn't seen so much of since Michelle Lee's early Field days and he's not happy to see it back. Against his usual, he hangs back as the other agents follow Kotzain out and he halts her and closes the door.

"You okay?" He can read her thoughts so well on her expressive face, in the nervous set of her eyes.

"I know what you want me to say, sir. But they say a pregnant woman is of two minds. Well, Special Agent Palmer is okay, believes them about Passive Scan and no danger and will deal with what happened. Michelle is scared for her baby."

"They won't be focusing that on you, or probably on anyone else, for a while. But we know it reaches the Navy Yard."

She takes a very deep breath, holds it and very slowly lets it out. "I'm fine, sir."

"I believe you. Now move it, agent. You're late."

"Yes, sir."

"And don't call me 'sir'."

"Yes, ma'am," she says as she reaches for the knob.

"Been hanging around Abby too much," he says.

"Yeppers."

Impertinent woman. Then again, Abby is better to copy than Sammy Sky.

But when the door is open the rest of the task force, with Kotzain, waits beyond it. As they walk, Gibbs does believe his agent. Palmer's grown in strength in the past year but he'd said that last reminder about the device reaching the Navy Yard to test her. Based upon that breath, Palmer will be fine, but she will not be back.

xx

"All Hands." Kotzain's voice fills the room as he leads the eight back into the chamber and up the side stairs. "This will be a full scale point-to-point Active Scan. Pull from the Archives the Life Patterns of our nine former colleagues. Find them."

"Sir?" Paul Lewiston asks, the diffidence in his tone carrying caution with it. This, he doesn't need a reminder about, is an intensive operation. Normally strangers would never be present for this, yet the L.S. system is also not behaving as expected, double reason not to do this now.

"Consider it an Advanced Test, Exec."

"Aye, sir."

x

"Setting this up will take some time," Kotzain tells the group beside him.

"We'll wait," the boss agent tells him.

'Of course you will. It could never have worked.'

x

But with very satisfactory speed the distinguishing patterns are obtained and on the Brobdingnagian screen before them pinpoints in their hundreds and in their thousands wink out.

"Two mile radius," Lewiston says, thereby providing scale as more and more lights vanish until, in the center, one light remains in the midst of an irregularly dense 'mist' of what he's already explained to be the unfiltered readings of millions (billions?) of lesser life forms.

"Well, you're lucky," he tells the men and women. "One's right here on the campus. Zoom in."

The light expands with impressive rapidity and by the time the view has come close enough to show against the clear field of the building it has already resolved itself into two lights.

'Not bad,' Kotzain thinks. In fact, he's quite impressed, as they had not yet reached the point of testing against antiquated readings, but by no stretch will he reveal that in front of the strangers. So far as they're concerned, this is a common operation successfully completed as it always is. "Who are they?"

"Corporal George Rakotozafy," one of the Techs in the third row reports.

"Sergeant Eva Livshitz," another man in row five identifies.

"We'll talk to them first," the old man decides, looking to the three he had assigned to track the old time people, the taller thin guy Dinatzo, Xena and Lieutenant Oswald. At least he wears ID; why can't the black jacketed five, not that he cares about any of their names other than Xena Daneed and Michelle Pamler.

"What about the rest of them?" tall, gray and cranky asks.

"Pull out," he tells the Techs. "Let's see if we can find them."

x

More lights appear on the edges and are as quickly blanked out, the dots in the center having immediately merged and shrunk to pinpricks and one point after another join them, sliding in from the edges, to settle upon three. Finally the inward motion halts.

"Twenty mile radius, Captain," Paul Lewiston reports, looking over a ninth row Tech's shoulder at the ubiquitous readout at the left edge of her station.

"That's our operational limit at this point, people. We can move the focal point searchlight style as you saw when we showed you the Navy Yard, but until we get more funding that's as wide as we go."

"Really impressive, Skipper."

He won't say 'thank you', not if maintaining the image that this is their every day work, but truth be told he's impressed too. They've never combined multiple targeting with archived targets and extreme range and the results are better than satisfying.

They'd wanted to track nine men and women and, excluding the two merged spots in the center, three lights shine on the tremendous screen.

"Where are they?"

Distances and compass directions are called out and as each is Kotzain identifies them as "Navy Yard. Who is that?"

"George Hertz," another Tech reports.

The list progresses to identify two more at locations he can't identify from memory, not military facilities.

Gibbs looks to DiNozzo. "Talk to them, then to Hertz at the Yard. What about the other four?" he asks Kotzain.

"That'd be Victoria Fryman, Lydia Betanco, Milton Hagain and Ryan Benton. They're out of range."

It's exceptional to get as many as they have locally when Navy and Marines are all over thee world.

x

Gibbs' gut suggests something to him and, as usual, he gives it its due. "Can you set your thingy to notify you if any of them come back in range?"

"One of our most useful anti-terrorism features."

"So once a person is ID'ed, no matter how long ago it was, you can find them anywhere within range of this thing."

"Yes, of course."

"And the people who were here yesterday, they're the ones who hold the purse strings, who say if you expand to portable units and longer range on this thing?"

"Congress does, but they'll listen to those men and women."

"That's the missing piece."

"What missing piece?"

"Why someone used Private Court to take out Thomas Benes. Once you have a lock on someone, that's it. Someone doesn't want to be tracked."


	5. Crime Scenes

Chapter Five  
Crime Scenes

In distant Norfolk, two hundred miles of road away from DC, Kevin Lamb and Lisa DuBois approach the end of the trip to the Bachman home, the furthest south of three to be checked today. The Espositos live west and northward of the Base while Cintron is further so. He lives near the northern Virginia border but is also dating a woman in DC.

"Pretty far for a romance," Lamb says as they turn onto Bachman's street.

"Spoken like someone who's not dating, well, anyone."

"I will. Give me time."

"You'll find the right one. And if not, there's always this fall's crop of Interns. I could put in a good word for you with the Director."

He parks in front of the address, glad to be stopped for his look is both hard and skeptical. "Me dating an NCIS Intern?"

"On second thought, you're right. They're to be protected from the likes of you."

"Is that what you women do when Interns and Probies come in, take them under your wings and warn them about the dangerous ones?"

"Damned straight. So if you want to have any prayer of Scoring, you'd better impress me." He reaches to his right hip and tugs his Sig from its holster. "That's not what I meant!"

x

He points to the door at the end of the walkway.

What had alerted him is not readily apparent to her, she doesn't believe it's the security camera to the right of and pointed at the door, until she sees the lay of morning shadow across the door's upper front. It's visible down the knob side yet angles upward to disappear over the hinges. When they get out of the car, she pulls her own weapon.

The neighborhood is primarily one story private homes separated by hedged driveways and according to the photos on Google Maps the houses devote more land to front lawns than to back ones, a notable change from the norm but it does mean that the front door, which is touching but not within the frame, would not be recognized as being unlatched if an observer from sidewalk or street didn't look closely at the right time of day.

They approach the door but press their backs against either side. If what they've been told can be relied upon, whatever may have happened did so up to eight days ago, but Lamb uses the muzzle of his weapon to rap on the door. "Catherine Bachman?" he calls loud enough to be heard by those passing on either sidewalk, and indeed a few widely scattered pedestrians do pause and look. There's little point in secrecy, for if he's right the area will soon be filled with local LEOs. "Federal Agents," he calls inside. "NCIS."

When this produces only local stares, he uses his weapon to push the door inward, and at the sight of his black Sig several of the closest observers try to become the furthest.

x

They step into a large living room and Kevin again uses the Sig, this time to close and latch the door. On the floor in front of them are four plastic bags of groceries, clearly dropped rather than set down. While he examines the room as a whole, Lisa inspects the spilled bags. "Everything's room temp," which, without the benefit of the central air, is quite unpleasant, "frozen foods soft, probably spoiled. Several leaked and dried out. Several days at least."

From beside the couch at the far wall he tells her that "there are 99 messages, but with two teens that's probably a day's worth."

"Got to play them."

"I'll toss you for it," he offers.

"I got my brown belt in Judo this spring."

Using the retracted end of a pen he flashes through the messages, the first few being those of friends with Norfolk area codes, the calls of increasing concern, these all being younger voices mounting to frantic distress which, as soon as he recognizes the voices, he deletes, moving then to deleting unheard the ones from familiar phone numbers. When finished winnowing the crowd that mount to shrieking panic, the remaining calls number exactly three, one from Dr. Shaw indicating it is the third contact - the first two most likely pushed off the queue by tremulous teens, one from Norfolk from a Lt. Fielder, the third from Captain Parker's Yeoman yesterday afternoon. They note that 41 of the wildest panics came since.

"Looks like whatever happened did so as soon as they came in," Lamb concludes.

"Perps were here first?"

"Let's see if they found anything interesting."

x

There's a den to the side of the living room but there's little need for a stealthy inspection; everything that had been in desk drawers is scattered on the floor and appears to be home and personal related. There's a checkbook, 943.27 balance, bills and receipts, Insurance documents, school records, pay stubs and tax documents, all things one would expect for a family of four. They hadn't expected to find folders stamped 'Top Secret', 'Classified' or 'Eyes Only' so they're not disappointed. Not only would such not make their way outside Bunker #1 but if they had those would have been the first things taken.

x

It's true, they'd learned from Gibbs last evening, that Tom Benes had had paperwork, cryptic though it had been, on him when he'd been taken out, but that was on his way to work at the NRL and he'd been the boss.

They're more interested in the records of the Security camera mounted to the upper right corner of the house and aimed across the front of the building.

Wearing latex gloves, Lisa uses the keyboard and wireless mouse to find and open the security file but "I don't expect very much," Lamb, at her left side, tells her. "Whoever installed that camera out there wasn't a pro."

"What makes you say that?" she asks while backing through the hours, daylight giving way to night and rising again, the garden shadows that line the front strip of the house passing the wrong way.

"Because, Blondie, the camera only shoots along the front door."

She stays looking at the screen but tilts her head sideways to look up to him. "Are you going to keep this up forever?"

"Keep what up?" he asks with faux innocence while a smile pulls at his lips.

"This thing about my hair. If you don't like it just say so."

"I like it. I think it brings out your inner qualities."

Something about his tone: "You know, as Abby says, there's no statistical proof that blondes are any less intelligent than brunettes."

"If you say so."

"I do. And I remind you that in that ultra-famous comic strip it was Blondie who was the smart one, Dagwood the dunce."

"If you insist."

"So I ask you, _are_ you going to keep teasing me?"

"Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…. _Yeah_."

"Bastard."

" _Stop_!"

She turns back to the screen, sees nothing of note but halts the rewind. "What?"

"Ten of them just backed into the house, looked like the family and six Fatigues wearing soldiers."

She lets the video roll forward and a man and woman, teenaged boy and girl are forced, bound and heads covered in black hoods, out the door by uniformed soldiers carrying AK-47s, their own faces covered in black. The last soldier out closes but doesn't secure the door.

"Any file on another camera?" Lamb asks.

"Just the one."

"Idiots."

That's what she knows Kevin had been referring to before. With a camera pointing to the street, they'd know how many and what type vehicles to put the BOLO out for. "We'll take it. Cyber can enhance it, maybe we'll get something on the uniforms. But download a copy too."

They each carry lanyards about their necks with 64G flash drives attached, had since their former Team Leader instituted the practice years ago. Robert DiMarco may have been a Traitor, but he knew how to plan ahead.

xxx

Gibbs and Mann, having checked the colleagues of the two still present at the NRL and having found them, if not perfectly innocuous - her word and definitely not his - though he'll keep attention upon them, then not sufficiently dangerous to warrant more than the usual observation. Each of them are now assigned to other projects and, so far as can be determined, know as little about the current status of Life Source as they had for too long. When the pair had left the project, they'd terminated their knowledge of it. They know what they knew on those dates, but will share none of it.

Now they've looked up a recent resource, PFC Harold Kurland. He's on his RDO but Gibbs already has his home address from the last time, when the man was a Suspect / Person-of-Interest in the attack upon SA Janet Levy.

Kurland isn't pleased to greet them at his apartment, but they have a history, he and Gibbs, and the affair had ended, if not well, at least not disastrously, so he does receive them cordially.

"How's Agent Levy?" is the first thing he wants to know. He'd seen her in the hospital, but in time she'd asked him not to visit. The sympathetic visits had become too uncomfortable for either of them.

"Out of the hospital," Gibbs says. "Recovering."

"I hope she does. What Larry did to her wasn't… hell, you know."

Gibbs doesn't tell him, he doesn't need to know, how the devastating attack, coming so close after the Photo Fake debacle and that after the murderous betrayal by her own Team Leader, had jarred her place in NCIS. He doesn't pay attention to Scuttlebutt, but he's one of many not sure of the woman's future. She's officially on Medical Leave, but will soon have to make her final decision: Return or Resign.

x

"Do you know anything about Project Life Source?"

"If that's what it sounds like, then the answer is no." He does, however, appreciate the directness. "I know nothing about any Project other than the Submarine system."

"Official stories aside."

"That's not an official story, Agent. That's fact. I know nothing." Eyes locked, long intense stare, close and detailed examination. "You here to Vet me?"

"No. Not interested in you. Interested in Life Source."

"Then I'm sorry, but whatever you're here for, me or them, no one talks about what they're not doing any more than about what they are. Violating that is the very best way to write your ticket out of here." He looks to Mann, she's in uniform. "You know, even if he's forgotten: there are two kinds, those who can be trusted with secrets and those who can't."

xxx

For Kevin Lamb and Lisa DuBois, the Esposito home is considerably less pleasant to investigate than the Bachman's home had been. When they enter the hot house, a good fifteen degrees warmer than the outside, they're hit immediately by last week's dinner. The Espositos had sat down to a meal of lasagna, three of six rectangles still on a working warming tray, a room temperature rectangle upon each plate, only one of these having a section missing, and an extra several days on the tray or in the very warm room has not improved the recipe.

"Holy God," Lisa leaves the door open, knows it will take longer in the calm afternoon than she wants to spare.

"I was hungry until now," Kevin says, wondering if they can do their investigation from the open portal.

"You won't be once this gets into your clothes."

"Oh joy."

"Helloooo," comes from a woman at the end of the long walk to the fence and neither can recall the last time they've been glad of an interruption in an Investigation. The woman waving to them from the sidewalk is in her late thirties, wearing a pink blouse and short combo over white sneakers. "Are you friends of Mark and Jodi?" Leaving the door open for the air to do what it will, they cross the front yard along the gray slate walk, pulling their IDs out and introducing themselves. "Oh."

"When did you see them last?" Kevin asks after a brief summary of why they were standing in her friend's open doorway.

"Had to be early last week. I haven't seen anyone."

"Ms…?" They're introduced to Vicky Cambridge, whose home is directly across the street.

"The last time I saw them everything looked normal, so far as I could tell. I never really looked."

Lisa's glance to the car in the driveway pulls Cambridge's attention to it. "That hasn't moved in a week, but it was really hot. I just figured they were inside with the AC on any time I came out."

The air conditioner isn't on, which accounts for the faces full of old food they got when they'd opened the door.

"Do you recall any unusual vehicles, any strangers in the area?" Lisa asks.

"I'm sorry, no."

x

"The front door was unlocked," Kevin says, retaining that there'd been no indication of a break-in.

"Jose, that's their boy, I've known Jodi to complain he'll go in and leave it open, but neither Mark nor Jodi will."

The table was set for an already begun dinner and Lisa hopes that when they enter the place it'll be survivable. "Is there another way in or out?"

"There's a back door off the kitchen, just like in all the homes on this block, that she always keeps locked."

A glance up and down the other side of the street reveals that the homes are individually distinct but structurally similar to the Esposito home.

The garbage pails on the other side of the driveway aren't empty.

"When is garbage picked up?" Kevin asks.

"Tuesdays and Fridays, but if it's not on the curb by seven in the morning you're out of luck."

The agents don't feel out of luck. Distasteful though the effort may be, refuse often reveals the most interesting facets of an early case.

The conversation lasts another ten minutes but yields no more noteworthy information so, rather than going back inside yet, they slip on latex gloves.

"Toss you for it," Kevin offers as they step to the first of two cans, quite ignoring her earlier Judo reminder.

"You're not getting out from that Chinese Restaurant on Tuesday." That dumpster dive is one that took two showers, one at NCIS and the other at home, to eradicate the odors from her hair.

"Fair enough." He lifts the plastic lid. The container is filled with shredded paper.

"Yerrrrrrrrrrr des - _picable_."

"Luck of the draw, Daffy. Sorry, Blondie."

"I hope they have a cat."

But for all their 'bickering' banter, both agents rejoice. While the long shreds of paper mean several hours of work tomorrow, the treasure they could piece together may well give them the answers they need.

xxx

"So Gibbs," Hollis says when they drive away from the talk with Kurland, "the calendar says this coming Wednesday's your big Awards Dinner."

"Not mine."

"I don't mean _your_ dinner, I mean NCIS'."

"Glad we cleared that up." Another two blocks pass before he tells her "Not going."

"What do you mean 'not going'?"

He spares her a glance. "Sounded clear to me."

"Well, you're probably not even in the running for 'Agent of the Year' anyway," she says, thinking about his long and impressive series of Cases Closed over the past year.

"Nope."

She's surprised not only by his answer but his certainty. "No?"

"I told them 'no'. Don't believe in awards for having fun."

"Well, since you put it that way…." She focuses her attention on the passing neighborhood.

"There's no one winner this year. There'll be an overall winner, but each SSA puts in one of his or her team for an individual award."

"Who did you put in?"

He drives for three more blocks before finally relenting. "Ziva."

"And you're not going?"

"Tony can present it."

"Wait a minute. Pull Over."

She reads surprise in his glance, but "Right away, Colonel."

x

There's no room on this street to do more than stop beside a green Chevy, but when he does she turns fully in her seat to confront him.

"Getting this straight, you're saying NCIS' Deputy SAIC, a Team Leader, is going to be a 'No-Show' at the first public shin-dig when one of his team is getting 'Team Agent of the Year' and you are not going to present it?"

She gives him fifteen seconds. "Didn't think so. Now get your tux pressed and you can pick me up Wednesday at 1800."

"Excuse me?"

"That'll give me time from 1400 to get ready and in my gown for you to escort me."

" _Excuse_ me?"

"It's a Couple's Dinner _Dance_ and I would never force you to go Stag. We _are_ a Couple, though sometimes I'm not certain a couple of what."


	6. Please Try Again

Chapter Six  
Please Try Again

Mid afternoon, Michelle steps off the elevator a half level below street level in the rear of the building, beeped in by the sliding door into the Forensics Lab and she immediately feels surrounded by 'Cracked and Spacy' on too loud from the room's many speakers. Abby grips the edge of her Evidence table and uses it as an anchor for deep knee bends. She waits, fingers to her ears until the woman finishes her set and turns, surprise evident on her face. Michelle moves her lips, miming shouting. Abby takes the remote, cuts the music.

"Very funny." The volume hadn't been up nearly so loud and now forms a background.

"Have to protect Jimmy's ears."

Abby looks about, a light frown on her face when she sees they're alone, so Michelle pats herself low upon her abdomen. "Oh. You've already named that little colony of cells?" Right now it'd be 1mm and have only the notochordal and neurenteric canals and maybe neural folds.

"Well, of course, if it's a boy."

"And if it's a girl?"

"Mei Ling. That's 'gorgeous spiritual being'."

"Mei Ling Palmer. It has a ring."

"Or Chun Bao, gem born in the spring since she will be; He Shui, lotus flower coming from water or Shu Xiu, warmhearted charming or–"

Abby's hands leap up. "I'm gonna stop you there. Fortunately you have over eight more months."

"Oh, that's not me. That's my _mother_ , my sister, my aunt–"

"Want my advice?"

"As long as it's not a name. I have a dozen more already."

"Which one is yours?"

"Mei Ling."

"Name her, register it, get her baptized or whatever witches do–"

"It's a Wiccaning and odds are perfect that we'll be doing both."

"And then send them a letter."

"Best idea yet."

"Glad to help. Now, what are you doing here interrupting my calisthenics?"

"Tim, Abby Borin and I have finished interviewing the main people on the Life Source project and tomorrow we hit seventy two Techs, though I'd give anything to wait until Monday. Saturday's already blown. Tony and his people have the former people but other than five locals, the other four are scattered from Montezuma to Tripoli."

"Cute."

"So far as I got from Tony through Tim no one has talked about the project since they left it, but Gibbs wants all the answers by yesterday morning."

"Sucks to be you."

"Amen."

"What is Life Source anyway?" The Task Force had left this morning clueless and she's still holding there.

"Sorry, that's Need-to-Know."

"You're not too preggy to be hit, remember that."

She giggles but "I'm sorry. I can't. And I certainly can't explain the science. But Gibbs wants to know what more you have on those CDs."

"How come he keeps sending you for his reports?"

"I look on it as the next phase of my training."

"Well, I haven't got much more than more of what I had when you guys left. I have to go over each and every disk to see if there was anything I missed, but with all due respect to the Gibbs gut, the Sciuto gut says we're dealing with a different breed of dodo."

"I was afraid of that. Well, I'll tell him when he gets back."

"And tell him the next time he wants a report to come down himself."

"I'll do that. When I want to be stared down. Why, miss him?"

"'Course."

"I'll see what I can do."

x

The silence builds until it becomes too heavy to carry. "Abby, would you do me a favor?"

"I don't knowww, I checked my tally this morning and you still owe me seven, and that one from the first was a doub–"

" _PLEASE_?"

She turns off the teasing; there had been naked begging in that plea. "Of course. What is it?"

"Would you test Jimmy and tell me he's okay?"

"Isn't he?" The man had spent a day and two nights in the hospital, in a straight jacket, after he'd strangled Michelle. That was after Sammy, drunk out of her gourd, had kissed him and they'd shared a (minuscule in his case) dose of the Fear Formula.

Sammy had spent days in a coma.

It's a nightmare neither ever wants to revisit.

"He seems to be, not even any more of that neediness but–"

Abby stops her with raised hands. "Put it to rest. I saw him earlier and he's fine. And I ran Sammy's test, too. I stuck her this morning and she really didn't like it."

"How could you tell?" The petite blonde imp is perennially happy.

"I almost got a glare out of her. But she's clear and she gulped that stuff down."

"I _know."_ That end to the last Ladies Night Out had been impressive in several senses. And now another one is coming?

"If she's clear, Jimmy's dose from that kiss was teeny tiny."

"Is that a Forensic measurement?"

"Half of a dribble or a quarter of a scoatch."

"I'm still going to scratch her eyes out next time I see her."

"Don't. All kidding aside, she feels horrible about Jimmy. She was in that coma but still, when she heard Jimmy wound up in a padded cell because of her kissing him she feels so horrible. And she's scared you and he will blame her."

"Not a bit. We blame the one who made that poison, and when we catch him he's gonna get worse than scratched eyes."

"Step in line. At the front is Gene Schecter's family."

"No shit. How are they taking it?"

"He worked in a bar but got brainwashed, tried to commit murder and when trying to get away took a hostage and blew the top of his head off."

There are some things that cannot be responded to. His death had been fast, Debra Zapigna had leaped from a building to escape capture by Tony and Ziva, then watched the cement flying at her through her 22 story fall.

The silence becomes too deep and Michelle turns away, seeking the safety of the elevator. Suddenly she very much wants to go to her husband even if she's expected back at the bullpen.

x

But as she starts away Abby asks "Are you coming to the L.N.O. this evening?" Michelle hadn't RSVP'd to this latest gathering. She can't blame her for any apprehension after the last one but she considers it even more important after that incident to make sure they have the Ladies Night Outs as scheduled.

There is no set schedule, the event travels over the week and the clock, being Nights Out in name only. She coordinates the things because if someone did not, and she often feels like the hub of NCIS, the events would run amok with lives of their own in trying to accommodate a 24/7 organization.

"Can't. Busy. Not only is this Jimmy's first evening since coming back to work–"

"I know." While he'd greeted her with his usual élan, even for a Saturday morning's Autopsy on the Vinchense shooting, she'd inspected him quite closely and had been satisfied with what she'd found. Now that the drug is cleared from his system, he's back to normal - faster than Sammy. "And I bet you have a special party planned to celebrate tonight."

"That was this morning before we came in."

"Do _tell_."

"Will not. But we're taking off early, even if it _is_ our day off. Gibbs already exempted me from double O.T. tonight and I'm sure Ducky will Jimmy, and we're meeting with a Real Estate Agent who has a place to show. I've _finally_ gotten him to where he agrees with me."

"Time in a straight jacket will do that."

"Bitch," she accuses without fire. "But I have a plan to get him in the mood for this evening. I want to make sure he's nice and mellow before we go."

"Don't make him too mellow; you're already preggers."

She ignores it. "I think it's just what he needs now, even beyond for the baby. Get away from that place since Alan Stephens blew up in it. Fresh place, fresh start, no memories."

"I have some Great decorating ideas."

Michelle stops her with a raised hand. "Abby, I love you and all, but you are _not_ decorating our house."

"Why not?"

"Okay, March, Tim and Siobhan's honeymoon. Remember? I helped you so I'm just as guilty but Tim's desk looked like a Mardi Gras float. He couldn't get to his keyboard. And Siobhan's office? 20 by 9, 188 square feet, it took us three evenings and it looked like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Warehouse exploded."

"Come on, it wasn't that bad."

"She couldn't get her door all the way open."

"Well... maybe I went a tad overboard."

"A tad."

"Okay. I'll limit myself to just the Nursery."

"Not A Chance!"

xx

On the way up in the elevator, she meets Tina Larsen boarding on One. After brief pleasantries, Tina asks "Are you two still looking for a house?"

"Yes, we are," she says, not wondering at the coincidence. Her Rule #7 is 'The only ones who believe in coincidence are the ones who haven't been paying attention.' This may be more like the Hand of the Goddess at work, she suspects. "Something good for raising a family. Do you know of a place?"

"So happens I do," Tina says as they step out on three. Document Analysis is left and two thirds of the way down. "In Alexandria, Rosemont actually, on Bayless Drive near Cross, two stories, ten rooms, modern kitchen, finished basement, white picket fence, the works. About 25 minutes from here or 10 if you let Gibbs drive. Asking price 580. And it's near a school."

"And how," she asks with a smile, "do you just happen to have all this on the tip of your tongue?"

"Because Ed and I are moving south. We've already started packing. Actually, I'm moving but I'm letting him come along. Seems I've attracted the attention of the Pensacola Supplemental Office. The SAIC down there isn't satisfied with the work of the Document Analysis Division Head so, through the Director, he's offered me the job."

"Congratulations." She's experienced enough now (thank you, Gibbs) to be sincere while not letting her lesser feelings show. A Supplemental Office in Pensacola isn't the Regional Office in Mayport and this as opposed to Headquarters - isn't that a step down?

"At 15% more than I'm making here."

"You go, girl." Maybe it's not a step down, not if the SAIC asked for her and bumped her up to Senior Agent.

"So tell you what. We haven't Listed yet, obviously. Come around sometime this week. If you like the place we can cut a deal and both of us'll save on Broker or Agent Fees."

" _Okay_. And on the subject, Susan Grady is interested in our place."

"I know."

"Oh, yes." The 'deal', pending the approval of their Landlord, had been made at the Ladies' Night Out at Starbase 86, the one she's trying to forget. "We may be able to do a three way and keep this In-House."

"Sounds like a plan."

"I'll call to arrange a time, Gibbs permitting."

"Yeah, I'm so happy I'll be Monday through Friday in DA. And if this works out I will never again see a workday with an 'S' in it."

"What, only Monday and Friday?"

She thinks about it, realizes her mistake. "Why not?"

"Goddess willing."

xxx

The sun is still above the western buildings when Lisa DuBois and Kevin Lamb end their three plus hour journey on 395. Most of this northbound trip had been spent discussing the coming Awards Dinner Dance on Wednesday evening and placing bets on who from each Division, beyond the Field Teams, would win. An aside to those betting sheets was the debate about who each would invite as their Plus One. After an extensive and friendly-heated evaluation of prospects, neither having an extensive social life with variable 24/7 schedules and an inability to discuss their jobs with potential dates, they'd submitted to the inevitable and invited each other.

"You just want to see me in a rental gown."

"Beats tee shirt and jeans."

"You've been trying to get me out of _them_ all Summer," nearly makes him swerve out of their lane, but when he fights the car back she graces him with a look of beatific innocence before she requests that he "Let me off G and 6th, would you?" Kevin looks to her as much to say 'how do you manage that segue without getting whiplash?' "Don't need two of us to talk to Jarvis."

"Nope, not when one's a dumb–"

"Say it and be braised, Lamb."

"Now would I make a comment about your intellect just because of your dye job?"

"I think you spent the whole trip back thinking up zingers."

"See, now that's where you're wrong. I'm hurt."

"Sorry," she says as he turns off 395 onto 695 rather than Marine Avenue to the Navy Yard. Perhaps that one wasn't deserved.

"It was both directions," he assures her with a grin.

"Bastard," she whispers.

xx

In a fairly short time, even challenging early evening traffic, he stops the car in front of a five story building. "Give her my love."

"I will. Any message?"

He considers for a moment. "Yes. Tell her to get off her sexy butt and come back to work."

"Sexist pig. You know, she's only staying away to avoid you."

"Not going to save her for long."

"We both know." She gets out, closes the door and leans in through the window. "'Sides, _I'm_ the one with the sexy butt."

She walks toward the building and Lamb decides he has no argument for her.

xxx

Jimmy is winding down from his first day back and has already changed into his 'secret identity' clothes as mild mannered Jimmy Palmer, retiring the Deputy Medical Examiner persona for the evening when his cell phone rings. "Hello?" he asks as he waves goodnight to Ducky.

/Hi, sweetheat./

He halts before reaching the sliding doors. "Don't you mean 'sweetheart'?" he asks his lovely wife as he glances at the wall that Autopsy shares with the garage. A quick up, over and down and they'll be together.

/Yeah, that too,/ makes him grin. He'll see her so soon that it makes her call so unexpected.

/Honey…?/

"You're not coming." Blast Gibbs. 'Chelle has been making him crazy about seeing a house and they'd finally gotten a lead on one and worked out their schedule - harder for her than him - to where they could see it.

/What? No. I'm already home./

"You're home?"

/Gibbs gave me the rest of the day off, so I wanted to get ready. I just wanted to know how your day was./

"You mean if I was panicking."

/NO! Yes. A little./

He frowns at the phone and of course she doesn't know it. "Honey, I'm _fine_. That stuff is completely out of my system. I know I was needy, that was the last traces of the drug messing with me, at least that's what Dr. Mallard says."

/Messing with you./

He can hear her grin. "Yeah, well, the point is I'm over that. That was the drug, but it's out of my system. I wasn't a bit nervous all day."

/Promise?/

"Yes, I promise. I'll go to look at this place and we'll see. But honey, Dr. Mallard has been with me all day and I'm fine. Now I love how you love me, but if you don't relax I _will_ spank you."

/ _Are you sure you're okay_? That drug was so awful. You could have a relapse! I should have Abby run another blood test. I can come back! She can rush the test–/

"And I'll take you over my knees while we're waiting," he says and her giggle carries more than relief. He waves to his silent mentor who has heard far too much and steps through the portal. "I'll be home before you know it."

/Good, because we have a 1800 showing./

"I know."

xxx

As is too familiar to be anything but aggravating, Catherine Bachman, Mark Esposito and Jeremy Cintron have endured thick black hoods placed over their heads and secured with draw ties about their necks for the half hour trip back to their prison. It's a small blessing that they're no longer silenced by ball gags secured by leather straps behind their heads. They've said all they wish to in their days in the sealed off aircraft hanger where they labor, as slowly as possible, to recreate the PCD Mark 9, or is it 10?, the infamous and virtually unknown Operation Dragonfire.

The journey takes the usual half hour but the many different turns and increases and decreases in speed still seem as random as ever.

As usual, an unknown number of masked soldiers clad in uniforms without identifying markers, patches or pins may or may not be in the truck with them. Attempts were made in the initial days in which they'd been relieved of gags but the only response had ever been the end of AK-47s jammed against various body parts.

They'd quickly ceased trying.

x

The entry to their prison had become routine as well: the opening of a heavy steel door into the cage, a small chamber made up of three walls of ceiling to floor bars and then the closing of the outer steel door and the opening of the inner cell while soldiers hold their families at bay with their rifles has become as common as any other small detail of their captivity. Does anyone even move to approach the gate anymore?

They are pushed, no longer shoved, through the cell door and the hoods loosened and removed. Yes, no one has moved from the far wall. To attempt an escape is impossible.

Those men in the cell with them back out of the thirty by thirty steel chamber while covered by their compatriots whose rifles point through the bars, and the steel door is closed again, no words, no recognizable sign, nothing.

Their families, Jodi and young José Esposito, George and Ben Bachman - Chloe is still consigned to as much bedding as they've been able to create by used clothing - and girlfriend Rita Fischer embrace them. Dinner, most unimpressive, has already been pushed on several trays through a welded opening over a short steel bar. Covered, it is at least hot, but no orders had been taken or accepted since their kidnaps.

"What's happening out there?" Ben Bachman asks, keeping close to his wounded younger sister.

"Same as in here," Mark says, picking out a tray and sitting upon the floor next to Jodi.

x

The nine have had no outside contact other than the scientists' with those working with them at the hanger where the weapon is being constructed, not that words having only to do with the project can be considered contact. Except for the few seconds between buildings and truck, they do not even have a clue about the weather.

"I don't understand this," José says.

"Don't understand what?" his father asks. In these days there is too much not to understand, and no likelihood of an answer.

"In school this past year we learned about something called the Stockholm Syndrome, about how kidnapped people sometimes grew to identify with their kidnappers, even to support them and actually try to _prevent_ their own rescues."

"Are you starting to identify with these people?" George Bachman asks, trying to hide his apprehension. He prays the answer will be

"What? No way."

"Stockholm, and there's a lot of complicated details about it," he tells the boy, "needs one thing these people aren't doing. It needs words, some interaction, something to identify with."

"But that's the problem," Rita Fischer says. "If getting one or more of you or us on his side would help this guy, why hasn't he done it?"

"I don't know," Jeremy says, meeting no one's eyes.

They do know, for he, Carolyn and Mark have discussed this at length since their second and final encounter their captor on the day they'd been set upon their assignments. They've narrowed the list of reasons down, over the days, to a single answer: there's no point in trying to win converts when you intend to kill everyone.


	7. Mapped Out

Chapter Seven  
Mapped Out

Special Agent Janet Levy is very comfortable on the green wooden bench in the K SW / Makemie Park, watching the children across the pond. They're close enough to watch yet far enough distant that she can't hear their play, so she can read Divergent in peace. Not one to look for omens in light reading, she does admit that the saga of Tris' struggle to be the person she wants to be does offer some reflection of her own state.

She suspects, however, that even with the passage of book time rather than as long as it'll take her to reach the back cover, Tris will have her answer first.

When a woman sits down on the bench three feet to her left she spares a quick eye flicker; fullsome blonde hair, blue tee shirt and jeans, she doesn't know her and returns to her book.

She's taken to sitting here on this bench by the pond a few weeks ago. She'd tell anyone who asks that she's meditating, but with a book and a lot of effort and determination to _not_ think about what has overwhelmed her life over the past weeks nor to think about her future, this is the very opposite of meditating.

"You know," the woman to her left says, partially impinging on her attention, "no matter where you go, you can always seem to tell a Jew. Just by looking."

Another eye flicker, this one not as casual yet equally unseen. The woman is looking across the pond at the children and women. Unfamiliar voice, mid-western accent, she definitely doesn't know her despite her belief that she can intrude. Unaddressed, she ignores the comment.

"I don't know, is it the clothes?" Now Janet actively ignores her, focuses upon Tris' challenge.

"Is it the hair?"

She glances up and ahead, again without moving her head, and among the children playing across the way are three young mothers with the five children. There's nothing particular about the three shades of brown hair arranged in a cut and style she's seen all her life. But she ignores with greater effort this shallow intruder who would encroach upon her privacy.

"Yes, it must be the hair. It always seems to have that sense of Jewness about it."

x

She darts the briefest possible glance left, only a microsecond longer than the others. The woman isn't looking at her but ahead at the families. Janet keeps her own eyes down, holds her gaze locked on her book. There's no one else around, the ignorant woman may be talking to her but she's not going to be pulled into this.

"They should get a style like yours, instead of the Jew cut."

She'd long ago given her hair over to one of the range of Regulation VST styles, then since leaving the Troopers and joining NCIS she'd kept away from 'ethnic' styles, but the distant woman in the middle, the one with the lightest short brown, wears her hair exactly the way she used to wear her black–

'The bitch has got me thinking about _hair_.'

x

She'd come here to not think of anything but Tris' travails in the book on her lap and turns several degrees right, hoping the idiot will get the message that she's being shut out.

"Know who's got the worst fashion sense? The Hasidics."

'It's Hasidim, bitch.'

"The women dress like they're trying out for the Faux Pas Olympics. I've never seen anyone with such horrible taste."

'Keep pushing it.' She fingers the silver star under her blouse, not sure if she should take it out and embarrass the idiot or leave it covered and not make herself a target.

It's not that she minds a confrontation, she can certainly handle herself with mouth or fists; however this imbecile wants to play it, but she's not worth it. Shylock had said it well in Merchant of Venice: 'Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, for sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.'

"The men are even worse. Winter, summer, same long black coats and big hats, especially the round furry ones. They look like furry space stations."

'But then look what happened to Shylock.' She stares as hard as she can at the open page before her.

"But furries aren't haseeds, are they? What are they called?"

'Hrrr _rrrr_.'

"Still they do dress just as bad. Those white strings hanging below coats or even vests, they don't even know how to cut them off so they don't look so ratty all the time, right?"

'One more word, bitch. Just one more _f*cking_ word.'

"And those little hair curlies the guys wear by their ears, makes them look like they've got Shirley Temple hair jammed under those hats."

She stares hard enough to burn through the paper and the idiot ratchets up a warbling, off-key rendition of "O _n_ t _h_ e _g_ o _o_ d _s_ h _i_ p, _L_ o _l_ l _i_ p _o_ p–"

Divergent flies away, she's on her feet, fists clenched as she looms over the idiot.

"Listen, you blonde goy bitch, _I'm_ Has–!" Astonishment replaces Fury as she sees the face grinning up at her. " _LEES_? WHAT THE _HELL_?"

"Boy, I knew you have a thick skin but it's thicker than a rhino's if that's what it took to get under it."

x

Their hug, more a squg for Janet, is as emphatic as the tongue lashing, or more if necessary, would have been. They disengage but what she really wants to know from her partner is "How did you find me?"

"Easiest. I asked your mom and dad."

"Of course. I never recognized you. You're generally not that much of a bitch."

"Thank you. I think."

She retrieves her book from the ground and sits back down, closer now. "Why the wig?"

She tugs a lock. "No wig. See what you miss when you disappear for weeks at a time?"

Janet gives her a closer inspection. A self-done job is often one solid color but this has the highlights and shading of a professional. "Good job."

"Driving Kev crazy."

"Why?"

She laughs. "I think he's trying to figure out how to ask if the carpet matches the drapes without me filing a 1561 on him."

"There _is_ no safe way."

"I wouldn't really do it even if he did, but I'd love for him to try so I can throw him a good scare."

"I think that's the thing I miss most about the job, you and me ganging up on him."

"He gave as good as he got in the practical jokes, though he did have to work twice as hard." She settles back on the bench. "So, speaking of that, when _are_ you coming back?"

"What is this, another ambush?"

"It's the $64,000 question. Everybody's asking, and I do mean everybody. There's even a Pool."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. Blame Anthony DiNozzo, of course. Surprised you didn't hear, it's been up for a month. It's running heavily to Mondays, less to a Friday and long odds on a Saturday. Give me a Saturday and the exact date and time and we can clean up."

Janet looks out across the pond and to the playing children.

x

"Jan?" She has no answer, just continues to stare. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking you should stay out of the pool."

"Oh, no, honey."

"I just don't know any more. Doctor says I can, I passed the physical, the psych, coming up for my firearms proficiency on Monday - they're pushing me, said I had to take them to keep my Leave; they lied through their teeth but I took the tests anyway… but the more I think of what to do, the more I don't know." She sighs heavily, pushes the paperback into a pocket it barely fits. "You know, I used to dream of a future here. There. Maybe even my own team, maybe some day Director - SECNAV - Something. But Bob had us, and what more he wanted was just so horrible…."

"You're not Bob DiMarco."

"Of course not. But neither am I Lisa DuBois."

"No, they're gonna carry me out of NCIS feet first – after _I'm_ the Director."

Levy sits back and stares up at the clouds which offer her no suggestions. "But I don't know about me, not anymore. I saw it as a career, now I don't know."

"What would you do? Go back to VST?"

She shrugs, meets her partner's eyes. "I could. Virginia," she says with heavy nostalgia. "So long with them, so many years as a Federal Agent, I could probably go back a Lieutenant, possibly make Captain in five."

"Have you been talking to them?"

She sighs. "That's kind of where it all falls apart, isn't it?"

"So then what?"

x

For a long time Janet says nothing.

"You know," Lisa says, "when Bob did what he did, killed all those other Agents – I can't even think their names, they're 'the Agents' – I nearly left."

"I know." It'd been a horrible time for all three of them. Kevin hadn't wanted Team Leader, neither of them wanted Senior Field - not that it mattered for a team of three - but she thinks they'd all been in shock. She wonders if she still is.

"I just couldn't bear to be a part of something that had a Bob DiMarco in it," Lisa says, still sounding like she's looking back. "But you're the one who talked me out of it, through it; you and Siobhan O'Mallory, you out, she through."

"Sure, you're blaming me now. It's my fault."

"Yep."

"So, for your revenge, now it's your mission in life to talk me out of quitting?"

"I can think of worse. But what I can't think of that's worse is being there without you."

"Now if you're going to get all maudlin on me."

"Hardly."

"But wait now, you going out of NCIS feet first, I thought you were the one planning the family."

"Still am," she uses the same tone she would to declare water is still wet. "Two, a boy and a girl.

"So it's two now."

"It is this month. And I've got their lives all mapped out from birth to well past college. The boy will be Jean, and even if people get it wrong and say John it'll still be okay."

"By then people will have forgotten Picard."

"My daughter's name is Gigi. Jean DuBois," she says in dreamy tones, eyes to the blue sky. "Gigi DuBois."

"Wouldn't your husband have something to say about that?"

Her eyes come down. "Well, I suppose I _could_ go that route."

"Is traditional."

"And I _will_ need someone to sit for them while I'm in the Field."

x

"So, all mapped out, huh?"

"Well, since I didn't have you to springboard off of, I had to do it all myself."

Janet had done a lot of spring boarding in the past two and something years as Lisa's maternal plans evolved and were frequently all over the theoretical map. It was going to be all boys, all girls, two and one, three and two, four and five (!), but the one thing that stays the same is that Lisa is _going_ to be a mother… and Janet's sure she'll be a good one.

"So, Jean and Gigi - DuBois - and you've got them all mapped out."

"Yep. Jean is going to be in NASA. He'll command the first Colony on Mars."

"That'll make people forget Picard. And Gigi? A model, I presume?"

"No way! Up and down a catwalk, never once crack a smile? No, she's going to be a Concert Pianist with the Boston Philharmonic."

"How about Jean plays the piano while Gigi goes to Mars?"

"Don't be silly, women can't be Astronauts."

Janet's bray turns the heads of the women and children across the pond and she must clamp it down with both hands. "Sorry," she says but Lisa can barely understand the muffle.

x

"So, pianist and astronaut," Jan prompts. It's better than that five and four who were going to be the first Major League Mixed Baseball Team. "Well, before you buy a tuxedo and a rocket pack, remember: 'Woman plans and God laughs'."

"She does have a nice sense of humor."

"And you keep Her so entertained."

"I do, don't I?"

"Especially when you're tormenting Kev."

"Ex _squeeze_ me? _I_ torment Kevin? _We_ torment Kevin."

"Not lately. I'm out of the Torture Patrol." The Soul Patrol was a Women's Wrestling team infamous for their dirty tricks and dirtier assaults, but emphasizing their split can only lead back to maudlin thoughts. "So, what's next on the Bitch Parade?"

"A series of kidnappings too long to get into this evening. We're going to interview the girlfriend of one of the victims and I sure hope she's home because she's one of those people who doesn't have a landline."

"Good luck." She remembers stakeouts and by no means fondly. "Then?"

"Then God's going to be really annoyed with me because we have to come in in the morning."

"You trying for a seven day week?"

"Never that few, you know it automatically turns into twelve. We found a whole garbage bucket full of shredded paper, _fortunately_ long strips, which we have to put back together. If we're lucky, they'll be the answers that'll break this case open – and if we're not they'll be printer instructions."

"So you're going to skip Saint Mark's."

"I know. Printer instructions."

Janet looks at the sky. "Well, I hate to run, but you've got Stake and I've got Cholent and if I'm late the Wrath of God has nothing on the worry of mom."

"I'll walk you."

xxx

It's 1640 when Jimmy Palmer rides the elevator up, trying not to think of how some day it'll be the last time. They have an 1800 showing with the Real Estate Agent and he's torn. He's lived here for so many years, it'd been his bachelor pad since he'd moved out of the house he'd shared with his mother and then so long with 'Chelle since their wedding but she's right, this is no place for a baby. And she's right, he _was_ being selfish to link himself to a place.

He breaks the thought off. He'd been thinking as a newlywed husband, not a father, but he has to start thinking, seriously thinking, as a young father.

Putting his key in the lock, he opens the door and is fairly surprised to find 'Chelle standing in the middle of the room not dressed for seeing the alleged new house but wearing a scarlet demi-bra that holds her treats out to him and a very, _very_ small pair of scarlet panties.

"We have to leave soon," she says.

He only thought he'd been surprised. "You're going to wow her."

"Not yet." She comes to him and hugs him tight. "I've been waiting for you," she purrs, pulls him down into a hot kiss. She backs up, guides him right sideways to the couch and any words he might say are silenced by her mouth.

He's very happy while they kiss to explore her already hot body, and in quick time both hands cover and mold her firm breasts. Her kiss is punctuated by her prying at his belt, she pulls down his zipper, undoes the clasp and pushes his pants down.

She breaks the kiss and pushes him onto the couch, kneels before him, spreads his knees and delves into his whites to free him.

"Sweetheart, you don't have to do this for me."

She giggles, traps the base of his already solid shaft between both thumbs and forefingers and aims it. "Oh you _So_ don't get it." She kisses his darkening head and glances up, eyes alight as she grips him. "I'm not doing this for you," she bends low and says before she takes him in "I'm doing this for _Me._ "

xxx

"I have SECNAV now, sir," the MTAC technician reports from his control console at the left wall.

"Thank you," Kevin Lamb says, leaving the comfortable theater seat for the dim well. A moment later the multi hued vertical test bars vanish to an image of Clayton Jarvis. The gray haired man's suit looks too well pressed for this hour in the undoubtedly well air conditioned building. He didn't drive eight hours round trip from 0400, visit a Bunker and three - soon to be four - homes and isn't looking at a late evening / night before the true investigation begins in the morning. He only has to take the report.

"What did you learn, Agent Lamb?"

'That rank has its privileges and Politicians have better ones. But no, that's not true. I learned that in High School.'

"More than I'd expected. Agent DuBois and I feel we're on the cusp of a breakthrough."

"Do you now?"

"Of course, the Investigation is still in its early stages. We've been to Bunker One and to the homes of the three missing Scientists and learned quite a bit." He has no intention, however, of revealing details like the video from the Bachmans' security camera or the shredded papers from the Espositos' garbage. He doesn't know what's on the papers, and when he finds out he'll tell Shepherd first.

"One of them, Jeremy Cintron, is dating a local woman, a Ms. Rita Fischer. We're on our way to see her immediately and I have high hopes that she'll be able to shed significant light on this case."

"Well, keep me informed, agent Lamb."

"Will do, sir." The image is replaced by the test screen. 'Now to see Shepherd and give her a report that's not top heavy with bullshit.'


	8. Old Victims Renewed

Chapter Eight  
Old Victims Renewed

Gibbs walks into the bullpen with Hollis Mann midway through Beta Shift and the first thing that catches his eye is that though Abby Borin and Frank Oswald are with David and McGee and he's about to get the full report of the afternoon's investigations, Tony's desk is vacant.

"Where's DiNozzo?" He had better not have left just because it's Saturday evening and they're not on the Weekend Rotation.

"MTAC, boss," Tim replies.

"What's he doing there?"

"I... don't know."

Gibbs ascends the stairs two at a time and uses the Iris scanner, but is surprised when the door doesn't click open. In case it's a fluke he retries the scanner but cannot get in. The only reason for this is that the door is locked from within.

"Gibbs?" Ziva calls from below. When he looks over the rail, she tells him that "Abby wants to see all of us in her lab."

He heads to the elevator. They can meet him on three. He'll get an accounting from DiNozzo later.

Palmer had at least _asked_ for the rest of the evening off.

x

In the lab, Abby turns to the group but the first thing out of her mouth is "Hi Hollis, hi Frank," then she locks on Gibbs. "Where's Tony?"

"Don't care. What?"

"Well, he came to me the other day with a theory about hidden information on those Psychiatrists' computers." She smiles an especially devastating smile, and how unparted lips can qualify as devastating is definitely a Scuitoism. "You remember, the ones who brainwashed people into killing those they love."

"I remember," Tim answers, his voice hard. They've been dealing with this, even beyond the McFadden debacle, for days and had rehashed the problem this morning so no one appreciates the humor.

"Oh, right, sorry." Teasing falls flat when someone you care about gets hurt, and not only had she triggered the near tragedy back then but she'd worked to create an ultra-hinky solution to Siobhan's brainwashing which was in turn applied to several other victims.

"Abs," is in Gibbs' warning voice. She may keep decent hours, arriving before Gamma Shift winds down to remain well into Beta but for the rest of his combined team it's been a long day and not everyone's a Sciuto.

Would that they were. More would get done.

x

"Of course." His reminder does bring her back to the Lab. "Well, he was right."

She directs their attentions to the silver laptop on her table. "This is McFadden's. We've had it in Evidence lock-up for months because there was no one to pass it on to. It was never called for as an Exhibit at her trial. I pulled a shipload of stuff off it way back then, then put it away and moved on. I didn't think to look for more on it than I'd found because it's a 60 gig drive and I'd accounted for all of it."

"You didn't, did you?"

"No, Gibbs, I'm utterly humiliated to admit that I did not. There's a hidden, encrypted drive, 2.4 Gigs, that I didn't find because the system, everything I found in fact, told me that it was 60 gigs and I'd found all 60. The computer lied to me. It was a Newbie oversight and I–"

"Punish yourself later. What's on it?"

"References to the ones behind the scheme, the ones we couldn't find because we thought McFadden and Richards didn't know. The brainwashing scheme was now officially run by our old friends McGillicuddy, Crocetti and Morrison."

"Not surprised."

"Those guys – that guy I should say because Crocetti and Morrison are behind bars at Gitmo until, well, the turn of the _next_ millennium – has more irons in the fire and more resources than I thought."

'Damned right,' Gibbs thinks. According to LA's OSP he's lately bought enough hardware to outfit a small Army. "It says it?"

"Well, no, Gibbs, I had to infer quite a bit because McFadden didn't have Clearance to know."

x

This is stunning. Abby inferred information on science? "Then how did you?"

"Because I found a hit list with finely detailed biographies. She was supposed to go after a load of people. Remember, we learned about that plot because Richards touched it off ahead of schedule, and we found out about McFadden because I accidentally touched off Siobhan's kill code." She turns to McGee. "How is she, by the way?"

"She's fine, no after-effects."

"Focus, Abs."

"I am focusing, Gibbs. With McGillicuddy's connection confirmed, I'm focusing on us having to check out each and every one of those programmed victims _again_ because I can't prove my treatment and especially those of the others who worked on the non-touched-off victims worked for this new 'kill yourself if cornered' wrinkle, so I do _not_ trust that it's over."

"It will be. I'm gonna get Milton Gyves and Rachel Cranston on that." He's sure how they'll feel about the evening calls. "What else did you find?"

"Like I said, I found a hit list, 42 names we didn't have, people she was supposed to go after by offering Counseling, probably had a dozen different incentives. They may or may not be programmed, I never believed two of them were doing this, but they're the wives of guys with eagles, stars and what have you?"

"What else?"

"Two point four Gigs, I'll have to let you know."

"That's good work, Abs." He pulls out his cell phone even as he leads his team out, presses the button to speed dial Shepherd.

x

"McGee?" she calls before he, last behind the group, can leave. He turns back and she crosses the room to him. "How's Siobhan?"

"I told you, she's fine."

"Is she, McGee? Really, really, absolutely perfect?"

"Abby, you're scaring me."

"I want to scare you. I want you scared."

"Well, you're doing a good job."

"Thank you."

"What should I do?"

"Act normal. And for God's sake do _not_ ask her about it."

"No." When Debra Zapigna and Gene Schecter had been cornered to be questioned, they'd killed themselves; Zapigna had jumped off a roof and Schecter had put a pistol under his chin. As soon as McFadden had agreed to betray the one behind the Hypno CDs - now they know it's McGillicuddy - she'd stabbed herself to death.

"Abby, thank God you broke this," he says with a glare to the offending machine. "Tell me, how long did it take you to break Tony's laptop? That had to be good practice." The solution she'd quoted had been exactly the one he'd set up on his partner's device.

"What laptop?"

"The one I created the hidden, encrypted drive for. The one he asked you to break into."

"When was that?"

" _Yesterday_."

"He didn't bring me any laptop."

"No?"

"No. He came down here with what I thought was a pretty impressive theory, suggested what to look for, but he didn't have a laptop."

xxx

The night trip home to Georgetown is quiet, Michelle leaning back against the head rest, hands crossed across her stomach, eyes closed and her breathing slow, lulled by the car's motion.

"I'm sorry," Jimmy says.

"Come on, it's not the only one we'll look at." The house had had a nice exterior but inside it just wasn't suitable. The only room good for a nursery had been too far from the second floor bedroom and from the stairs that let off by the bedroom, and the kitchen downstairs had had a definite tilt, meaning the floor had already begun its sag. It will need a major restructuring some day, but not by them.

At least she has Tina Larsen's offer of her house as part of a three way trade, but she hadn't mentioned that to him yet. Later.

"I know you want to move."

She pats her abdomen. "Little Jimmy does too." Ten rooms behind a white picket fence in Rosemont? Maybe? Tell him now?

"Little Jimmy." His voice is dreamy.

"He needs his space." Her sigh is as much moan, something she can't manage to hide in time. She recovers her stomach with her spread hands, boosts the level of energy until she can feel it flow from her hands into her. The Healing force feels like tingling, directed force so difficult to put into words but so much better than a pill would be.

"You okay?" Jimmy lets his massive concern flow through the words.

"Ummm, I feel fine now," Michelle whispers. She hadn't been able to do anything to settle her stomach - 'why do they call it Morning Sickness when it hits any hour of the day or night?' - with the Real Estate Agent standing just feet away, but now "I can let the power flow."

The tingling in her hands is the first sign the energy is raised. It is hard to envision but to raise and direct it she thinks of it as a blue light extending from her hands and she focuses on pushing it into her stomach. That her nausea fades and her stomach settles is a much clearer indication that the power is working.

"I wish you'd take the Diclegis."

"Left it home."

"' _Chelle_."

"I have a bottle of potion," she says, patting her pocket. "If I couldn't cure it with my own Laying on of Hands, I could take this." She'd put together a multi-herbal brew from her Wiccan Medicine book, telling him she preferred the old ways to modern curatives.

"You'd do better with the Diclegis."

"Oh, Jimmy, don't be such a Darrin."

x

She yawns. "But I'm all healed. Now I just want to get to bed."

"Me too," he tells her with definite undertone.

She turns to him, sees his face changing in the glows and shadows of the newly lit street lights, but has to force a smile to meet his enthusiasm. She'd worked to make sure he was in a good mood for the showing, but he goes from ultra solicitous to normal to lascivious sometimes too quickly for her to keep up with. She does prefer normal, even lascivious, to his continually treating her like a China doll since the night she'd conceived aboard the Pacific Princess. but sees he's not in the mood now to treat her as a breakable. "Okay, I know that look. Let me have a cat nap, then we'll play."

"You sure you're up to it?"

This smile is more sincere. "All healed, better than the Diclegis can do. We can play."

"Right after your pussy nip."

She laughs quietly. "You're filthy when you're horny."

"Been horny for three days."

"We did it this morning," she reminds him, as though he needed a reminder. It had been his 'Going Back to Work' treat. " _And_ you got a top off before we left."

"That was before. And it wasn't a top off, it was a warm up."

She fakes a sigh. "Oh, all right. I can see I'm not going to get any peace until I take something down. Again."

"Of course you'll get a piece."

She shuts her eyes. "Shut up before you talk yourself out of it."

xx

Orchard Lane off 30th is as quiet as a half block ought to be; one of the reasons, she knows, why he loves this place so much that he's fought her every effort to move. Of course, now that they're going to need more than three rooms she has her advantage. For now she doesn't care, because the queen bed is just down the hall from the elevator and she'd only pretended reluctance. She wants to be topped off even more than he does.

But she looks forward to the day when she'll never again have to take an elevator to reach that bed.

He unlocks the door, lets her in first, but the moment he closes the door he grabs her arm, pulls her back into a hug and so thorough a kiss she finally has to push off from it. "No, come on honey, remember, cat nap, then pussy."

He thinks it over. "I can wait." He releases her, she turns toward the hallway past the couch but he yanks her back, spins her into a firmer hug. "I waited."

But she pushes off hard, and when he sees her choked expression he loosens his grip and she clutches her stomach, other hand clamped to her lips. " _Uhgh_ , spin me around like that again and you'll regret it."

"I'm sorry." He releases her as soon as he's sure of her balance and that she won't lose her dinner on him.

"Just let me have a while," she pleads, backing away past the couch. "Turn on the porn channel and set yourself on 'simmer' for an hour."

"Okay." But as she goes down the short hall past the long closet on the left and bathroom on the right, he makes no move toward the remote.

" _ **JIIMMMYYYYYYY**_!"

The yell conjures images of their return from Virginia over a month ago and her finding an excavated corpse of a burglar in their blood splashed bedroom. Telling himself it can't have happened, he runs faster than that time and bursts into the bedroom before thinking 'again'.

x

Their light blue bedroom isn't splashed with blood and detritus this time, nor is there a bloody corpse on the white carpet on his side of the bed.

This time it's a young woman who lays face down on the white shag below the foot of the queen bed to his right. For all he can see she's wearing a beige blouse over blue skirt, her wavy black hair spread like a halo obscuring her profile. Her right arm is raised along the foot of the bed, the left extended to her side.

The end of the bed is messed as though she'd struck it a glancing blow on her way down, but beyond her the only things there are that she could fall away from are the doorway - which would have put her further from the foot of the bed - and 'Chelle's very large and ornate mahogany mirror highlighted by carved arcane symbols, particularly a circled star above the arch, symbols he's never wanted to understand.

It used to stand in the living room where he'd rather it'd stayed, useful for last minute checks before going out the door, but the ornate antique had attracted too much attention from guests and 'Chelle prefers all her Wiccan materials in one room, so here it had been moved.

It's in line with the foot of the bed, a few inches short so it doesn't block the hinge side of the door, but Jimmy doesn't want to think of her falling away from the mirror.

But he does, and the only thing he can construct is that she came through the mirror, a thought he's truly trying to avoid, struck the foot of the bed a glancing blow and landed face down upon the floor. It's the one image he can create that accounts for the physical evidence and he doesn't want it.

'Chelle stands slightly to his left, her body having automatically assumed a firing stance, Sig from her skirt back holster drawn and trained down at the motionless body. She lowers the weapon from the probably unconscious intruder. "Goddess _damn it_ , we're buying the next one."

x

However, despite the too recent memories of the bloody corpse that had instigated the debacle in Kenilworth for them and the drone attacks for the rest of NCIS last month, this time there are differences. This time it's a woman, seemingly young from what they can see and the room's not bathed in her blood, nor is there a gaping crater in her side. And when he kneels beside her, blocking his wife's view, and grasps the young woman's slim wrist, two fingers over the pulse point, thumb applying gentle pressure behind, he's able to report that "She's alive."

'Chelle relaxes, pushes her Sig into its skirt back inner holster under her windbreaker. There's hardly a need for this much caution; they're perfectly capable of handling a thoroughly unconscious young woman.

He pushes the black hair away behind her head and stares at the revealed face.

"Do you know her?"

He looks back and up, belatedly realizing she can't see past him. "I've sort of seen her face before." He looks back to confirm it. His blood goes cold.

He's not wrong. What he sees is insane, impossible, utterly mad but he's not wrong.

"Where?"

He looks back and up to her and again feels his chilled blood forced through arteries by his racing heart. "On you."

x

'Chelle comes around his right side but neither can deny it. To Jimmy the face before them is so much like a younger version of the woman beside him that he doesn't know what to think. It's not an exact match, that would be too freaky, but other than age - she looks to be about twenty - and wavy black hair rather than long and straight, the woman at his side and the woman at his knees could be sisters.

'Chelle looks to the highlighted Scrying Mirror set beside the bedroom door and that look pulls his gaze too.

He returns his attention to the woman before him. Whatever else, she's a patient. Her head is turned to them so he gently raises one eyelid, and her green eye responds to the light. At least that's a distinction, she doesn't have 'Chelle's brown eyes. She does have a regular pulse and no fever. A check of arms and legs reveal no fractures, at least not easily found with the woman unconscious. "Hon, would you get my stethoscope from my bag in the closet?"

But before 'Chelle can cross the room the young woman gives a long, sighing groan and her eyes slowly open as though forced. She doesn't pick up her head, but turns her eyes to look up at them.

"Ohhhh, the Goddess is having too much fun with me."

"Who are you?" 'Chelle demands, her voice hard like she's channeling Gibbs. The fact that their intruder mentioned the Goddess does not, in this instance, gain her any points from him and certainly none from her. It's now clear that the Scrying mirror is somehow involved, but she doesn't ask about that, wanting to know at this moment "And what are you doing here?"

The woman, maybe in her mid-twenties, raises her head and looks to each of them with eyes that struggle to focus. She clears her throat, looks to 'Chelle. "Mom."

She looks to him and he feels his blood chill - again. "Dad. We have to talk."

x

Michelle grasps the foot of the mattress, eases herself down to her knees. Jimmy stares into green eyes so much like his and a face so much like hers.

Michelle recovers her voice first. "Who are you?"

"Su Lin." She sighs, pushes up further. "My name is Susan Linda Palmer, but I go by Su Lin. And you're James and Michelle Palmer, my parents."

Michelle, kneeling beside Jimmy, is literally rocked back upon her heels. Her right hand, undirected, goes low to her body and the woman forces a smile. "Congratulations, mom. It's a girl."


	9. Back from the Future

Chapter Nine  
Back from the Future

But Michelle's voice is breathy as she, kneeling, supports herself against the bed over the astounding young woman who still lays prone on the white shag carpet before them. "I'm going to faint now."

Su Lin shakes her head. "You won't." She casts her eyes upward to Jimmy. "May I get up now, dad?"

Asking permission to get up only adds to the unreality of the moment, but Jimmy helps her to her feet, keeping the action automatic because if he allowed himself to think he would be the one who'd faint.

' _Dad_?'

When she's upright she's about midway between their heights, just about where he'd expect biology to put her, and in addition to green eyes in her definitely Chinese features he can find enough of himself for her not to be a younger copy of his stunned wife.

He decides he can't pass judgments, for if she's stunned he's flummoxed.

Susan Linda - Su Lin, okay, she looks more Asian than Scandinavian so he sees the sense, though if he ever had a daughter he'd call her Susan and Linda is a nice complement, says nothing. She stands still and allows them to look at her until their minds absorb their grown daughter standing before them while at the same time being a several week old dividing colony of cells in his wife's womb.

x

'Chelle boosts herself off her knees but must sit on the end of the bed, more a collapse on weak legs than a controlled sit.

Jimmy tries as hard as he can to say something reasonable without falling into uncontrolled stammering, something that happens all too frequently and he doesn't want it to defeat him this time.

Su Lin looks about the bedroom. "Wow, never been here before. Talk about a blast from the past."

"You've never seen this apartment?" he asks, forced, when he can force thought, to the realization that his wife had won her point.

"No, I grew up..." she halts. "Somewhere else."

"Rosemont? Near Alexandria?" 'Chelle asks, sounding shell shocked. "Bayliss near Cross?"

"Yes."

"What?" ' _Where_?' Are they on some mystical wavelength when he's not on any wave?

"Later, honey."

'Chelle recovers first - as usual, which is as frustrating as that short answer, though she gives him a very odd look before focusing her attention on their daughter. Wow. _Daughter_. "What are you doing here?"

x

"Before I can answer that: mom, you and your team got into Project Life Source today, didn't you?"

"Yes." She's not about to sound the fool by asking how the woman knows that. She's not that discombobulated.

"And Dad, you and aunt Sammy and some others have _already_ been dosed with something that made its victims afraid of everything, right?"

"Right," he says. It's a breathy admission, testament to the fact that he's half blasted out of this reality. 'Aunt Sammy?' "Wait a sec, _some others_?"

"Dad, don't worry," she says instead. "you never suffer any effects from that drug. You and everyone else are really fine. There are no after-effects."

"That's a relief."

" _Wait_ a second!" 'Chelle demands. "Some _others_? Everyone else?"

"Please, mom, one thing at a time."

"One thing at a _time_?" She sounds like she's going to lose it in about three seconds, but

"Time is everything," the young woman who claims to be their daughter declares, sounding satisfied, but it's with a sharp drop of shoulders that signals a release of pent up apprehension. She glances at the Scrying Mirror. "Sometimes Transitioning doesn't work exactly right when you muck about with Time as well as Space, especially when I was going by your stories to hit the correct moment." She glances again at the mirror, not much love in her look. "Or for it to hit me. Messing about with Temporal Spatial Transitioning is something like dealing with Schrödinger's cat, something hasn't happened until it's found to have happened. Until then it's–"

" _What are you talking about_?" blasts out of him. Okay, if he's her father that gives him the right - or the authority - to demand answers and he wants several hundred. "What are you doing here? What do you mean 'stories'? Who else was poisoned? Why were you unconscious on our floor? How can you be here from the future? How can you be both standing here and in _there_ at the same time? And _Why_ are you _Grinning_ at me?"

"Because it's so nice to know that some things never do change, dad."

x

"Don't you 'dad' me." His knees finally give out and he's glad he hits the bed next to 'Chelle, his impossible daughter standing before them. "I'm too young to be a father."

"Well, technically that's true, but you do adjust by late April." Michelle looks up at her, starting to recover, but their daughter - this is insane - misunderstands the look with a shrug. "Twenty-third." She smiles. "But it really is incredible. You're both so young, I can't get over it."

Jimmy can't help but gape. This is going too far. " _You_ can't get over it?"

"What are you _doing_ here?" 'Chelle demands, looking like she's still not in a hurry to stand up.

"You sent me, mom, with messages." She allows a moment for that to sink in. "We weren't totally sure of everything; memory plays tricks after twenty four years, but she - you - remembered learning several ultra-important things you needed to tell yourself but you couldn't come because there'd be two of you so you sent me, remembered sending me, will remember having going to send me–"

"There _ARE_ two of you!" she cries, hand inches above her lap.

"Not exactly. I'mmmm..." she shrugs, perhaps lost as well, "under construction."

x

"Wait a minute." Unaddressed for several moments, Jimmy has been able to rally and now gets to his feet without wobbling - feels slightly proud of the accomplishment - and tries to impose order. "You say 'Chelle - your Mother - sent you here, from...?"

"Let's just say two decades, don't want to get too specific."

"No, of course not." She's already said it's twenty four years, she'd be twenty three, has already given her birthdate so how unspecific does she want to get? "With information we absolutely have to have, information so vital it's worth violating the Temporal Prime Directive because she remembers getting it so you're avoiding rather than creating a Temporal Paradox."

" _Honey_."

He looks down to her. "Give me a _break_ , would you? I'm _winging_ this."

"And doing your usual very good job," Su Lin says. "That's essentially it."

"My usual very good job?" He's more used to 'occasional mediocre attempts'.

"For all the memories I have of you, you've never been anything other than an inspiration."

x

"Su Lin?"

"Yes, mom?"

She puts her hand to her head, looking down to the floor. The white shag is the only thing here that hasn't changed. "Ohh, I need an aspirin."

"You're kidding," she declares.

Michelle looks back up. "What do you mean?"

"Well, you simply don't get pain, at least I've never known you to, for more than a few moments; nor will you allow Dad any. Me, after I turned five, that was another story."

She reaches out, runs her fingertips along Michelle's forehead and Jimmy can see the effect reflected in her eyes.

"That's incredible."

"Very first thing you taught me." She looks to Jimmy, who hadn't responded well to that 'other story'. "And from the time she taught me, I was responsible for my own pains." She shrugs. "Only way to learn."

"Oh, I can relieve pain, but I have to hold my hand on the spot and it takes about ten seconds or so."

"Wow. By the time I started school you could do it with a wave of your hand from across the room."

She stands up. "Then I do become a more powerful witch."

The smile falls from her daughter's face. "Scary powerful."

x

Jimmy steps in. "I don't think I like the sound of that."

"You weren't meant to." She turns to her mother. "That's the first message, from you to you."

Michelle takes a deep breath, holds it, lets it out slowly. "Go ahead."

"You've always put more effort in focusing your talents on Healing, sometimes at the expense of other abilities, and that wasn't a bad thing because NCIS is a dangerous life and you have more than enough occasions coming up to justify making Healing an essential talent, but _all_ your talents are growing, possibly more quickly than you realize. You're not balancing your training and you really have to, but you also have to work on your control. In this time you're having a lot of trouble with emotional control."

"She's got a temper that could–" but he falls silent at her glare.

"That's what I'm talking about. Mom, from my first memories growing up you've always had superb control, and you've worked hard to teach me to control myself, my emotions and my talents. You drummed it into me from Day One that a witch needs self control or she's 'disaster on the hoof'." She gives her a wry smile. "I went through my chunky phase."

Jimmy sees nothing chunky about her but keeps the assessment to himself.

"But at this moment you don't have that control and you _need_ it, badly and soon."

"Why?"

This time his assessment of his daughter is that Su Lin is a woman caught in conflict.

x

"Something's going to happen, something terrible, something that will affect all Practitioners of the Magical Arts for decades, possibly centuries to come. I told you all about it before, mom, but–"

"Wait a minute." Jimmy demands. "You told her _before_?" This with a glare at his wife. They've withheld things from one another before, usually when the job leaves horrible behind and crosses over into nightmarish, but this is withholding on a totally new scale.

"This... ah... isn't the first time I've come back."

"You don't say."

"But it _is_ the last time. At least I think it is. But you don't remember the last time, either of you, because I had to block it from your memories until time caught up with it." She sees something familiar in his expression. "I _had_ to, Dad, and yes you were pis - mad when you remembered but I had no choice."

He wonders at that self-edit, but she turns to Michelle. "But something is going to happen, a few years from now, and you are going to need that self-control in place before it does. Right now you're ambivalent about those Anger Management sessions. You can't be anymore. You described them as having helped you through what you had to deal with when this came."

"When what came?"

x

She hesitates, apparently caught between what she has to say and perhaps all that she wants to say. "I can only tell you something's going to happen, that it's less than six years off, and when it hits you are going to have to have your emotional control in place."

"Or else?"

"You mentioned your development, that you become more powerful, and I said you were 'scary powerful'."

"And?"

"You brought me up not to exaggerate."

oooo

'Goddess,' Su Lin Palmer appeals as she faces her unnervingly young parents in their old apartment. Ever since coming through the Scrying Mirror in her office at Otherworld Investigations and getting knocked out by Transition Vertigo, she's barely managed.

'Mom's supposed to be fifty one – _is_ fifty one – and Dad should have some white in his hair, but this is too much.

'I hate having to decide these things. Yes, I'm here with orders but I have latitude in how much I reveal and how but I really don't want it. I hate affecting the past without knowing the future – the one that's my future where everything either comes together or more likely gets cocked up beyond all reason or repair. And I _hate_ the old days.

'The old days. That's when people just registered by checking off on a list Catholic, Protestant and so on. Ever since 2020 and Roe vs. Wade - and I stillwish they hadn't called it that - Witches of real ability in the Armed Forces are required to Register.

'Those were the bad old days I'm grateful that I was too young to know or care what was happening around me when things went from bad to horrible, but I grew up knowing all the stories. It's not just World History, its family history. The case that touched off the powder keg was Clarence Roe vs. Harrison Wade vs. the US Selective Services. It proved Witches of power really exist, brought us into the public eye and for some time almost made us - them rather, I was too young and still unknown - the secret weapon in what could have become World War Three.

x

'Mom was one of thousands who could have been forcibly conscripted into the Marines or one of the other branches. She'd've gone from Federal Agent to Soldier.

'It would have happened too but for the mundane but very powerful forces Uncle LeeJay could wield, but while mom got lucky not many others had been. Then Congress, in a rare example of rational political thinking, smashed the Military's hopes of creating the Super Force, but for quite some time America had been a truly horrible place for those like us.

'Freedom of expression and personal development had allowed the advent of truly talented Witches. The lack of those same freedoms choked development in the societies of our then-enemies. To my knowledge no totalitarian society has ever produced truly powerful Witches. That distinction had been the linchpin in a truly despicable plot.

'The 'Pentacle Plan', the Pentagon's tongue-in-cheek euphemism for creating a race of super-soldiers, would have touched off the very war they'd sought to avoid. What do you suppose our non-magical, our Mundane enemies - and our occasional Allies come to that - would have done when it came out we were developing human weapons against which there is neither range limit nor defense?

'Right.

'From 2020 to 2021 the political and legal battles waged in every arena you can name. The result is that Witches are as out of the closet as you can get. Screw 'don't ask, don't tell'; in the past decade plus you can practice and live in peace but you had damned well better tell.

'One result of that long shakeup of society and politics and the Arms race is that it allows me, and others, to make an honest living. It opened up commercial ventures the likes of which couldn't even be imagined at the turn of the millennium. The downside is that we're cataloged, classified, indexed. My file, which I'll never see, is probably a hundred pages thick.

'Or so I flatter myself. It's probably a couple hundred K's of data on a Server in the sub-basement of the Hoover building.'

ooo

Jimmy and Michelle are both frustrated, and recognize there's no help for that frustration. Su Lin had come from - where? - to tell them something so important they cannot wait for the natural course of events to reveal it. This is a case of 'forewarned is forearmed' but they do recognize that she will reveal what she may - or what the more mature Michelle told her to reveal - and nothing more. To try to pull more than that is to waste whatever unknown amount of time they have.

"Tell us," Jimmy directs and tries to ignore the irony of being a father giving an order to his grown daughter - who's nearly his own age.

"Yes, sir. The problem centers around a Court case: 'Roe v. Wade'."

"If that's the issue," Michelle says, "you're a couple of decades _way_ too late."

"Yes, I've always hated that too but some Newscaster will, in a few years, shorthand the real title to the two principals in the conflict and it'll catch on with the public until this day - I mean until my day."

"Yes."

"The real title is 'Clarence Roe vs. Harrison Wade vs. the United States Selective Services' and the spark has been struck yesterday evening. The fuse is lit and before anyone realizes it, it will tear this country apart from the inside out."

"I don't know anything about your time," Michelle admits. "Yet. But in this time we have an expression: 'Give it to me in five words or less'."

"I'll give it to you in thirteen. We're Outed, and we're going to be conscripted to launch World War Three."

x

"We?"

"Witches, mom."

"Give it to me now, all of it, every word."

"Enough with the fore glimpses, young lady," Jimmy says.

"Yes, ma'am, sir," and this is very telling to them. "At the Naval Research Lab, there's a secret operation in progress. It's called 'Operation Life Source'."

"Been there, done that, scared the hell out of me."

Su Lin's eyebrows leap up but she apparently won't touch on why, says instead "So you told me. It was intended to be used to identify living beings by their life essences. The developer has the best of intentions; find lost people, disaster victims who can be located to the square foot, identify and track terrorists - all the sorts of altruistic, good purposes that the Military can't wait to subvert into a weapon.

"We think it detects Auras but whether life essences or whatever... Picture it, picture it, how to pict–? Remember the television show 'Star Trek'?"

Michelle's so focused that the tangent is painful but "We haven't been living in a cave."

"'A Taste of Armageddon' was the title. In a war room everyone's looking at a war screen when suddenly a light brighter than any other flares up, spreads and eventually fades. That happened last evening when five Solitaries, not Rising Star Coveners, in an exercise inside a Circle, raised a force equal to two hundred fifty life essences and sent it through the Circle out into the world. It was supposed to increase general wellbeing in the world, a foolish and undirected experiment, but when it was directed out _through_ the Circle it didn't just get noticed, it was like sending up a flare."

" _Shit_."

x

For a moment Su Lin is clearly startled but she regains her track. "The ceremony ended immediately, the two hundred fifty bright spot went down to five before the scientists could lock onto anyone. Being unexpected, they put it down to a fluke, a power surge, something wrong with the machine - but they never did find anything wrong with it. They did not understand, then, what they had seen. Neither did they understand, in this point in the project, what happened when the machine read your magically enhanced aura."

"I thought they were reading you."

"No. I have no powers until the day I'm born."

"What? It shouldn't work like that."

"Please, mom, better you don't know. Trust me. Please?" That agreement is not easily won and Jimmy can see it will be temporary at best.

x

"Well anyway, they're right now pulling and testing every circuit the thing has but they won't find anything wrong because there is nothing wrong with the device. Further testing will ultimately prove that and will reveal us."

"What can we do?"

"History records that you warned Kendra Little tonight. She and the other High Priestesses forbade Unsupervised work outside the Temple but that order didn't work with Solitaries and only delayed the inevitable because it was Solitaries that ultimately did us in."

"How?" Jimmy feels a cold knot in the base of his stomach as his daughter outlines a personal disaster she and his wife lived through - will live through - and speaks as though there's no way to stop it from happening.

"A Marine General Gregory Castagna eventually put - puts - it together. Three years from now he realized - will realize - what we are, that Mystical talents are real and that Witches could be Conscripted as Warriors."

x

Michelle sits down upon the bed and Jimmy doesn't feel very stable either.

"When the Military realizes, four years from now, what we can do, it starts a secret undercover mission. Two years later it sees light and we're rounded up. You, as a Federal Agent, escape much of that and I was simply too young to be useful, but thousands of our Brothers and Sisters were conscripted and trained as weapons.

"We were the perfect soldiers who couldn't be defended against. Put on the front lines, we'd be devastating. Even at great distance many of us could decimate opposing forces. Dropped into enemy territory, such as into cities - I don't have the word for it."

"We have to stop this," she whispers, wishes she had a clue as to how.

"No. You have to let it happen."

x

" _What_? Don't be–"

"Listen, you've already been brought into the situation. You're going to investigate that device, I can't tell you why and I won't tell you when, but it's going to happen and when you find out what it can do – if not for this conversation – you're going to want to scuttle that thing, even if doing so destroys your career. You'll believe it's vital that you scuttle it, but you _can't._ You _have_ to let it be developed."

"So it can bring down hundreds, thousands of my - of _our_ \- Sisters and Brothers? If I can stop that then my career is a tiny price to pay."

"No it is _not_. You are going to have to go against everything you believe in, all your faith, all your _morals,_ because you are going to know what's going to happen and you have to let it happen, no matter how many thousands of people get hurt."

"What _possible_ incentive could I have to do that?"

"Would you kill Hitler?"

x

Every student has been asked that at some time in his or her life ever since the concept of temporal mechanics had first been broached and had turned it from a question of Philosophy into one of Theoretical Physics. Such a pity no one gave serious consideration to approaching the problem from another angle, yet Jimmy has his long considered answer.

"No."

He doesn't flinch under Michelle's shock and outrage at his perceived betrayal. "Just from a Civil Rights perspective, to say nothing of technology, medicine, sociology, race relations, World War Two had to happen to bring us to where we are today. To change the war, to really change it, you have to kill every baby in Germany, Italy and Japan who grew up to direct and control the war, no matter how many babies that is. And then you can't be sure the survivors who take their place wouldn't be worse."

"Okay, Jimmy," Michelle challenges, "how about the Holocaust? Would you let _that_ happen?"

"Yes."

She stares at him, appalled. "I don't know you."

"Because the Holocaust, horrific as it was, taught us the one lesson we had, as a race, to learn. It taught us 'Never Again'."

"And World War Three has to approach the brink," Su Lin declares, "because the horrors we as a country could have inflicted upon ourselves led to a new and broader 'Never Again'."

"How?" Michelle demands. If she is going to have to abandon her morals, take actions that will hurt - kill? - her brothers and sisters, she damned well wants to know _Why._

x

"Witches were conscripted, Civil Rights for them were canceled, Citizenships dissolved, and then it was found that such an Army as America would raise could be duplicated all over the planet. True, we had the numbers but while the freedom of expression that allowed Wicca and so many other things to thrive didn't exist openly in several other countries, it inhibited group development but it didn't obliterate Magic or the Right Hand Path - and most especially not the Left Hand Path.

"Where Covens were rare, Solitaries existed in as great numbers as in any other society. There's a natural need for expression that totalitarian Dictatorships like the Middle East, the 'Stans, couldn't erase, no matter how many hundreds of thousands of their own citizens they exterminated. The Talented, be they Shamens, Vaudun or whatever, say Witches for collective shorthand, in other countries were identified, found and trained as weapons just as Americans and our Political Allies were."

"Goddess," she whispers, looking as though she's reached her limit, but her daughter has more horrors to convey.

"But that was the turning point. People finally realized that not only was a weapon that cannot be defended against being developed, but that it could also be duplicated. When the horror of that set in, the Pentacle Plan became a weapon that must never be used.

"And America openly canceling the Citizenships, Rights and Liberties of thousands of native-born Americans raised a backlash the likes of which Washington hadn't ever imagined."

ooo

'Actually, I _wasn't_ too young to be useful. In fact, when talking raw energy, I was too tempting a target. I'd told mom last time I was here that my power boost came from my very dramatic birth in Autopsy, but that was one aspect and I let her believe it was the only one that set me on this Path.

'But from the days when she'd first started feeling the effects of pregnancy, the morning sickness, then the bloating, the back pains, the sore feet, the exhaustion, the mood swings, she'd drawn on the Cosmos, on the ambient psychical and eldritch energies in the world, to get her through the physical hardships.

She told me that was why she'd shown up so dramatically on the Life Source screen, though she hadn't realized it until months from today, well after I was born. She's recently started drawing on the eldritch energies to help her with morning sickness and even that was enough after months and years, as she started using it to get through long and hard days and weeks of NCIS trials over the years to ultimately have her shine on a screen intended to display life energies.

Today is just the start of a long process that leads to me, yet one more reason I can't tell her why it had happened. She drew on the directed force of the cosmos more and more frequently, eventually she was drawing constantly on the ambient eldritch energies, the magic of the Goddess, to get her through the days, bolster her up, keep her from the pains pregnant women go through for months. She used to amaze her team mates because, no matter how big I got, she carried like it had no effect at all.

'She realized far too late to matter that the constant influx of magical energy, the 24/7 infusion of mystic force that got her through the weeks and months, that though she'd expended much but not all of it in her daily activities, it had to go somewhere. There was a great deal she took in that she didn't use, and that massive, continuous influx of energy over some eight months had to go somewhere. Guess where.

'Right.

'Of course, when I was so young; infant, child, I hadn't come into my powers. I was like an overcharged battery whose energy I had no clue how to tap. But when I did, I lit up that Life Source thing like a super nova and suddenly everyone wanted me.

'But by then it was the end of things, the backlash was well underway, the people were coming down on the military plans and blasting them to shreds.

'And what do you suppose, just for an example, my uncle LeeJay was doing? Well, the military wanted to turn a 5 year old girl – his _Goddaughter_ – into a Weapon?

'They tell me that on quiet nights on Capital Hill, when the wind is right, you can still hear him.'

ooo

"Treaties, long bickered over, were ultimately banged into shape," she tells them, not a moment lost in real time, "but it took years. The various countries ultimately banned all testing; the Pentacle Plan was over within months and the awareness of the Talented - as I said we were Outed to stay – resulted in the society we have today."

"And what _is_ that society?" Jimmy practically demands, the tension high in him.

x

Su Lin reaches into her blue skirt's pocket, pulls out a leather folder and displays a gold shield. It's an intricate device in the classic shield form but among its words and symbols the sigil in the center stands out prominently, a raised five pointed star enclosed within a circle. "I'm a Licensed Private Paranormal Investigator. That is, I don't investigate the paranormal, I use the paranormal _in_ Otherworld Investigations."

She looks to her mother. " _You_ are NCIS' Headquarters Division Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge, uncle LeeJay's old job today." She has a moment to enjoy the light that shines in her mother's eyes. "You sit at his desk but like him you prefer the Field to an office so you head up your own MCR Team. And _you_ are Chief Forensic Pathologist though you prefer CME, so this family does turn out okay."

"What about Doctor Mallard?"

Her shoulders fall. "Dad, it's been over twenty four years."

"Oh. Right."

"I can't tell you anything more about the people you know and what happens to them, so don't ask me about Director DiNozzo or Mossad Deputy Director David or Professor McGee _or_ Bishop McGee or Doctor Marsters or Doctor Dwyer because I can't tell you."

"Doctor Who?" Neither of them is surprised at the reference to Dr. Marsters, not since Sammy's occasionally dramatic relationship with Bill, but who is Dwyer?

"Aunt Sammy and Aunt Ab– _Darn_ it. I jumped the gun a bit, didn't I?"

"A bit. You must take lessons from Abby."

"True, until I got to her. Just forget it."

"That'll be so easy," Jimmy quips.

x

"I can fix it, if you'll let me, so you'll never want to reveal any of that, particularly about the device, to anyone, but I need your permission because I cast one spell on you because I had to, but I didn't like it and neither did you when you found out about it twenty three years later."

"Wait. Twenty three? Didn't you say you're from twen–?"

"My _point_ was to tell you that things _will_ work out, to let _you_ know, mom, that you have to have the self-discipline to let them work out, for the people in the front lines to have the chance to do the right thing, no matter how vague that sounds at the time. You and others are going to want to use Witchcraft to combat this, but cooler heads have to prevail. It won't get underway, the bad times that is, for six more years but you must _not_ stop it.

"You'll have real strength by then, remember what I said about scary powerful, but if you don't have the self-discipline to let things progress when you really want to wipe it all out, then you'll wipe out the good results along with the problems."

"So I sit tight and do nothing?"

"That was never you, but your actions must be considered, thoughtful actions, not _re_ actions. This is what you sent me to tell you."

"And to let us know but make us not want to tell anyone," Jimmy concludes. He stiffens, holds his breath for a moment, then nods. "All right," he says. "Go ahead."

"Done."

x

" _Done_? What do you mean 'done'? Just 'done'?"

She shrugs. "You expected Doctor Strange, with flashes and streamers of eldritch energy?"

"I wouldn't have turned them down."

"You never change, backward or forward."

"But how do you know about Doctor Strange?" Michelle challenges. "That's got to be so ancient and inconsequential."

"Uncle Tim made sure we were all brought up on the Classics."

" _We_? You have brothers and sisters?"

She shakes her head. "No, dad, I'm talking about uncle Tony's, uncle Tim's, aunt –"

"I get the point," Michelle says, not wanting any more foreknowledge.

"You'll find out when you get there. But I have to go back. I'm glad you'll be there to catch me; there's a daybed in front of the mirror up there but I've missed it before." 'Though at least I won't slam into my desk; I had enough sense to arrange the office so I avoid that.'

"Catch you?" Jimmy's concern rockets. "You know, you never explained why you were passed out on the floor."

"Transition Vertigo. You know all about that."

"Remember, honey, the time I went home to China and they were going to take me to the hospital, and then you freaked when I got back? And when I transitioned into that Alternate Universe I was unconscious for a whole night."

"Don't remind me." She had told him he was dating someone named Breena _and she was dead_ and in an uninformed fit of jealous rage she'd nearly killed that woman in their bed, thinking he was him – rather….

"We're moving with an Earth rotation of eighteen miles per second objective motion," 'Chelle says. "The reason we don't feel the Earth rotating, it moving laterally in its orbit, the sun moving and the galaxy turning is that we're established in our senses to treat the galaxy as though we're standing still in DC.

"If we allowed ourselves to feel Objective Motion rather than Subjective - it can be done with a stretch of senses - it'd scare the willies out of us. When I went to China my inner ear and every sense that orients me insisted I'd reversed objective direction by thirty six miles per second, and _that_ apart from being upright _and_ upside down, and I don't want to think of that AU." She, Jennifer, Siobhan all dead, Jimmy with some other woman named Breena, Ziva had tried to ...

x

"Well, in this case," Su Lin picks it up, "I started out in January so my spin and orbit would have been a hundred eighty six million miles apart and in opposite linear directions, but I also jumped in Time. The sun and Earth are each moving laterally, the galaxy's rotating and after a quarter century 'my' Earth is nowhere near 'this' one."

"Amazed it didn't turn you inside out," Jimmy says.

"Damn–" she glances to her mother before editing herself, "darn near did."

"All this time you two haven't solved that?" he asks, admitting that nowhere else in the universe than with these two so similar women could he have a conversation even remotely like this one.

"Can't be solved," Michelle declares.

"There's a price to be paid for instantaneous transportation, and Transition Vertigo is the coin. It's called the Law of Objective Motion and now I have to do it _again_."

"So soon?" He was just beginning to get to know his daughter.

"Have to, dad. Aside from the effect of _two_ TVs on my system, and I do not want to do this - last time I did it twice it knocked me on my a - _butt_." Again that guilty glance to 'Chelle and the self-editing.

"Despite what I said earlier I _am_ literally in two places at the same time - actually it matters more that my soul is - and believe me when I say that is _not_ good. So I must vanish before... well, before.

"Mom, remember, you _need_ those Anger Management Sessions so don't skimp."

She quickly embraces her, holds tightly. "I love you, mom." She turns to him, her hug just as tight. "I love you, dad."

"I love you too, Susan," he says, his line of sight including his wife's abdomen and, wonder of wonders, he means it.

She steps in front of the mirror before this can become more emotional. "Well, you'll see me in about five milliseconds... and I'll see you in nine months."

"Goodbye," Jimmy says. "And thank you for letting me know how you turn out - even though I can never tell anyone."

"You're welcome." She turns again to the large mirror, takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. "I'm _really_ going to hate this."

From their point of view, their daughter steps into the large pane of mirrored glass. From how 'Chelle has described it, he doesn't want to know Susan Linda's view.

/*/*/*/*/

Author's Note: For the introduction of Su Lin Palmer in context, see my peek of the future in 'Into the Light'. For her earlier trip into the past and the secrets she cannot reveal a second time, see my episodes 'Fantasy Affair' and 'Otherworld', in that order.

Then if you like, read 'Pieces', her Mystery in which we meet the cast we so love a quarter century from now.


	10. Thunder

Chapter Ten  
Thunder

Gibbs doesn't hate when a case seems devoid of useful clues - he detests it.

The fact that his team is enhanced by three additional agents, Hollis Mann from Army CID, Abigail (not Abby) Borin from CGIS and Frank Oswald from Air Force OSI accents the lack of progress.

They know from Abby, the only one who has not left the building today, that Jackson McGillicuddy of the coterie of McGillicuddy-Crocetti-Morrison (are there replacements for the captured pair or is McGillicuddy running the show alone?) is responsible for the Phobos drug, as Abby has named it, that took out Captain Thomas Benes, the former head of Project Life Source. It had also taken out Sammy Sky and Jimmy Palmer in a failed attempt to get to Abby Sciuto, but how he did it and why remains unanswered. There are theories, he needs facts.

That M-C-M was behind the Murder / Suicide disks, the Phobos drug and Life Source had surprised no one. In mid-July in California, through the late Grekor Kanyicska, McGillicuddy had concluded a massive deal to buy a vast amount of heavy weaponry, smart guns and bullets, mortars, missiles, bombs, armor piercing shells, perhaps even tanks, the most Kanyicska has sold at any one time. This was before Richard Burgoyne had moved against the Arms Dealer and every Agency is on High Alert to find out about these weapons in addition to all that had been done before

But how does this tie into a comprehensive plan, or set of plans?

The Phobos drug had worked, but aside from taking out one man, and moving two up the chain of command, both of whom are being re-vetted, what more is there to the plot?

If anyone else has run screaming into the night, none of the four Investigative branches of the Military has heard anything about it.

At least there is nothing known that has passed that damned Need-to-Know wall that has been erected against solving this case by the very people who need it solved.

x

Life Source, an over-sized, probably over funded, device for detecting and locking on, for better or worst, to any living being, has a high opinion of, or affinity for as Hollis had said, Palmer. Why? Out of an entire room, and then of anyone in a ten mile diameter, what makes her special? Pregnancy? How many women in a ten mile range are pregnant?

Her witchcraft? Nonsense. There's no machine that detects belief, whether real or imagined. PC rules (which he never cares about but which NCIS follows - their mistake) say he can't set her straight. If she wants to imagine witches that's her business, and if she wants to worship a 'goddess' that's none of his.

Murder / Suicide disks, Phobos drug, Life Source, more heavy weaponry than anyone deserves, and Lamb's shrunken team is investigating the disappearance of scientists in Norfolk which, until proven otherwise, he'll watch as a PDC/9 rerun. How does that abomination fit in? _Does_ that case fit in? If so, then how?

ooo

Interlude

I drag myself back to consciousness and light to a hand on my forehead and another on the middle of my chest and I lift my eyelids - not my first or preferred idea - to find mom seated in a chair beside me and I'm upturned to the white ceiling of my office.

I feel like I'm bouncing between a five hundred volt charge running through me and having run flat out straight into a brick wall. I shift my eyeballs left, can't bring myself to move any other body part. I remember stepping through the Scrying mirror, getting my feet under me and immediately being slammed by a hundred sledge hammers. That it's the second time in a row I got hit by a mega-Transition Vertigo doesn't make me feel better at all. I've now survived my second double slam, not just spatial but massively temporal, and I swear I will never, ever, _ever_ do it again.

"Mom?"

"Welcome back. I was watching. A good job."

"Thanks." I look more closely at her. She was so young – so was dad – and now she's, well, mature. No gray, of course. No lines. Just… mature.

"Are you okay?"

"Peachy keen." It comes out in a groan and I can't help it, but what I do know is that "Next time, you're going."

"There's not going to be a next time." She doesn't have to remind me. Can't have two of the same soul and ego in two places at the same moment. I got away with it because I wasn't a separate individual back then, but my stomach had been doing Olympic Gymnastics the whole time I and cell colony with my soul me were a few feet apart. After birth no _Way_ will I do that to myself.

I sit up on the day bed, or try to, and catch the briefest glimpse of Tina standing beside my desk three milliseconds before another Transition Vertigo slams me flat on my back.

x

The padding still isn't soft enough as my head bounces off it. "Oh Goddess," I force the whisper out while my office does a wonderful imitation of a contested soccer ball at double sudden death overtime. "What's this?" Every time the room shoots northwest my body's insides slam southeast and half the time they shoot off in a totally nonexistent direction at an impossible spin. I don't know how long I was unconscious in the past before mom and dad came home but "How long was I out?"

"Five minutes."

I sit up, the room kicks at me and I slam at it. It spins and I grab it by the throat and force it to stop. I yank Healing and Stabilizing energy from the cosmos, fight the room into stability not with a draw of power but a violent yank so I can sit up, gape at mom and put every bit of outrage into "Five _Freaking_ _MINUTES_?"

Body and soul need time to integrate, minutes at least, and I should have had hours. "You yanked me up after Five MIN-!"

I look into her eyes, turn to see Tina's and a bucket of ice water deluges me. "Ohhh…." My heart kicks up to two hundred BPM. "My…." I feel my soul drop out through the day bed to fall 21 stories and crash into the sub-level garage hard enough to shatter the cement. "GODDESS!"

"What?" mom asks.

I get my feet onto the carpet, shove up and of course my head keeps on going through the ceiling but I no longer care. I drag it back onto my shoulders, step toward the desk and stagger toward the floor. If not for Tina in front and mom behind I'd've fractured my rib on the huge desk but they catch me, Tina's arms tight about my torso to keep what's left of me on my feet.

x

"Su Lin," mom says from behind me, releases my shoulders but I fight my way out of Tina's grip and to my desk. "What are you doing? Take it easy."

Easier advice to take had she let me sleep until morning but she didn't and there's only one conceivable reason why. Still, good thing Tina caught me because beyond the desk is the south wall and that's glass from top to bottom, side to side and I have to wonder if I'd prefer the trip.

"Su, what are you doing?" she asks, concern a counterpoint to my utter panic.

"What's wrong with you?" mom demands in that tone of hers that says to me as much as it would to her MCR team that 'you had better focus and answer me intelligently right now'. I'm told she learned it early on from my late uncle LeeJay, as all his team's kids called him, but I'm not quite up to managing logic or coherence.

"Thunder, mom!" We discussed it before my transition. "What's Changed?"

Nearly a century ago a famous writer had written a short story called 'The Sound of Thunder'. It featured a Time Traveler who failed to follow safety provisions while in the past and a seemingly insignificant act caused massive changes in the present.

"Nothing. I told you, I monitored you. Nothing you, your father or I did changed anything."

x

Okay, sometimes it can take a whip-snap to cut through a Transition Vertigo Panic Cocktail, but mom has always been good for that.

I look around the office and, in fact, nothing has changed. Three walls and one ultra window beside my desk with a spectacular - and suitably expensive - view of DC. Door to the outer office opposite the window so DC is often the first thing clients see, that Scrying mirror I've decided not to like for the rest of the day at the wall that backs my desk. Day bed at the opposite wall set there because sometimes Transition Vertigo knocks me senseless. Extra extra extra large photograph of a green irised eye on the wall behind my rightward facing desk. It's a super extreme close up of dad's left eye and is the logo of Otherworld Investigations. I forever feel like dad's watching over me every minute I'm here.

I go around the desk to the south window wall and from K Street looking south along 16th past Lafayette Square and the White House and past the Ellipse and all of DC that I can see from up here is the same as it was this morning. Even that tasteless billboard facing north on I street and five stories lower where no billboard should be to be seen from the sidewalk is still there: a virtually topless blonde photographed from the bare back as she sits before her boudoir mirror in the ad for a backless, strapless bra that's cut my view of lovely DC for more than three years. Backless and strapless means it uses two separate cups with cellular adhesive at top, sides and bottom, up top to lift and below to stick to ribs to lock it in place. No woman I know would wear it. Were I to I'd probably rush out for a case or to meet with a client with a unbalanced combo and that'd be the end of my credibility. It was a stupid idea when it went up three years ago, though with its back to the tourists, it was stupid before I transitioned and it's stupid now.

Nice to know stupid persists.

x

"Convinced?"

I turn to admit defeat (how could one conversation change anything?) and my gaze falls upon my desktop.

"No," I tell them as I sit down. Mom brought me out of the fugue of T.V. rather than allow me to integrate naturally and a conversation about change is exactly what she and I had had a quarter century ago.

The big desk's middle is bare, everything is on the left and right sides and I touch the upper left and right corners of the clear space at the same time so the computer can read my index fingerprints. The ring fingers are for the closer corners and the desktop comes to life.

Seventy five years ago people talked about desktop computers. They had no idea.

Mom stands before me, the picture of exhausting patience but I don't care. She scared the He – Hades out of me and she's neither capricious nor sadistic. In fact, she always has a reason for whatever she does, even if she does have the frustrating habit of making me work out those reasons for myself.

I call up my month's Calendar. I'm juggling five cases at different stages of completion and all the boxes are where they're supposed to be and the colors are what they're supposed to be. I could touch any of them and the files will open but I won't. Yet.

The issue was Project: Life Source and General Castagna and Roe v. Wade and the Pentacle Plan and the potential World War Three so I open the Historical records I studied, not like I had to, before I left and speed read.

If anything is different, it's not in these files.

x

I turn off the computer and look up. "Okay. I'll bite." I glance at Tina to my right with a look meant to tell her I may well find out what she tastes like too. "What's the situation?"

"I told you, there is no situation. You did a good job."

"Then WHY–" I have to pull myself short, "did you pull me out five minutes into coming back when you know what aborting a decent reintegration will do?"

"Because Jimmy was here when you came back."

"He was?" It's hardly necessary but I look at the wall to the reception area. It's automatic so sue me. It's also Tuesday and looks to be still early afternoon, not that much later than it was when I left, maybe three hours or so. Why would dad come all the way up here from the Navy Yard in the middle of the day?

"And he absolutely had a fit when you came out of the mirror and crashed into our arms, dead to this and several other worlds."

"That's _it_?"

"That's it. I decided the only way to calm him down was to put him out and bring you around so you could show him you're okay."

"Yeah," Tina says, "you know how Jay Jay gets."

x

This stops me, but I don't give her more than a 'what was that?' look. Tina and I are friends more than we are employer and employee but this sounded a bit too familiar from her, family-familiar, as though bordering on being disparaging of dad. She wouldn't _dare._

Not in front of them, but she and I are going to have a conversation after they go.

Right now I just want to see dad. It's been three weeks not counting ten minutes ago, so I cross the room to the outer office, holding his young image from the trip in my mind so I can have fun comparing.

I pull the door in. "Da–?"

He's not there. In fact, the only person there, sitting on one of the cushioned chairs where clients wait with Tina is a black haired man, a young man, fifteen maybe? A client? Too young by far but Tina left someone unattended to be in with us? Yes, we are definitely going to talk.

He looks up and practically jumps out of the chair. "Su Lin, you're okay? I was so scared," is all said while he crosses the room to me. He's three inches taller so I have to look up, rail thin the way teens get before they fill out, anxious face–.

"Jimmy," mom says behind my left shoulder, her admonishment voice, "I _told_ you your sister is fine."

I ca - can't - can't ge - breath! My h - heart - What - No - Ji - _Jimmy_? The room - swaying. I can't - gasp - fast enough - nothing's - in fo - cus - Jay Jay? No - JJ - James - _Junior_? Bu - _bu_ \- buuuuu….

The world turns black but I barely feel hands grab….

ooo

"Bachelorette chic," is how Lisa DuBois, pulling on latex gloves, characterizes Rita Fischer's three room apartment to her partner. The white doily centered upon the dark brown table in the middle of the living room, the one whose right side is misaligned three feet into the room and whose feet had mussed the carpet, the drinks cart in the corner stocked with mixers in plunger top bottles, in the bedroom the over comfy single bed covered by a double thick comforter in the middle third of August, the shelves covered by cloths whose decorative fringes hang off the edges….

When they'd arrived at Rita Fischer's the accumulation of local eatery menus on the floor outside the apartment door, three at various levels duplicates of earlier hawkings, had been a major tip-off to everyone but the menu guys.

The door had yielded to Lisa's skills. If ever Probable Cause could be invoked, this is it.

They'd set the too large stack upon a bureau inside the living room in what each admitted was a useless attempt to keep from spreading the word that no one was home.

x

"What does bachelorette chic mean?" Kevin Lamb asks, not altogether sure he wants it defined.

"Professional, together woman who will still bring a date home and would love to get laid, provided it's his idea."

"His idea?" he asks, taking in a dozen homey, frilly accessories.

"Of course his idea. It's always his idea. All she does is suggest it."

"Now you know why I quit the dating scene. Too complicated."

"Not complicated. The woman's always right. Haven't Jan and I taught you anything by now?"

He closes his eyes, counts slowly, then says with no inflection "This is a Crime Scene, not an article in Modern Bride. Get to work."

"Yes, Master."

By the time he reopens his eyes, the sassy wench still hasn't wiped off that smile.

x

But the banter is calculated rather than flippant, for it is too obvious that this is not going to be the simple question-and-answer session they'd hoped it would be, and disappointment vies with concern and both of these must be cut down.

When they'd arrived at that second floor apartment, those hopes had been well and truly dashed.

He's glad that Cintron is something of a traditionalist, given the somewhat wilted condition of the roses laying on the floor ten feet in from the door. It and the misaligned table and chairs are enough to tell them that a date had been the reason why Fischer and Cintron had gotten together and that it had not ended well.

Perhaps it hadn't even begun well.

x

Opening drawers and doors in the living room, Kevin finds everything neat, organized by function and utterly mundane. There are no military secrets, no file folders with 'Confidential', 'Top Secret' or 'Eyes Only' stamped on them, not that he'd expected any. This is the girlfriend of a scientist, by their research she's in Advertising, yet when Lisa turns to him from the other side of the room she wants to know "Ever have the feeling you're being watched?"

"I'm a guy," he says, sorting through unrevealing papers in a cabinet. "Guys don't get watched. That's your and Jan's lives."

Her serious "Kev" pulls him around and there's no humor in her eyes. "We're being watched."

x

His first glance is to the curtained window but the blank wall of the next building twelve feet away proves no one spies from there. The building they're in has three apartments on each floor, which explains the two rooms plus kitchenette and bath, this last only deep enough to accommodate a shower rather than a tub.

The bedroom window faces the same blank wall. Kevin feels nothing but trusts his partner enough to continue the search, suspecting he knows now what they seek.

It's Lisa who finds it.

On the shelf over the television is a set of hardcover books of varying size and color, yet only one book stands between two four inch lion statuettes which hold it steady. Not touching it, he gets close enough to find the pin sized hole aimed across the room to the door.

Lisa hadn't sensed a human's stare, but likely her subconscious had picked up the seen but not consciously perceived anomaly of the book placements and had alerted her to it.

"A Nanny Cam," Lisa says. He turns to her. "Well, that's what I call it."

"No kid, no nanny."

"So what's so interesting that she monitors this room instead of the bedroom?" Her question is a challenge, an offer to speculation he's not going to take.

"Let's find out," he says instead. "If I'm right, we just hit the mother load. I want to see this film asap."

"There goes my beauty sleep," she says with faux wistfulness.

"Wouldn't help anyway."

"Oooooh, that's mean."

But despite the banter, neither is interested in sleep. If this camera recorded what happened, they want to see it immediately.

Kevin carefully removes the fake book from the shelf, cautious of any wires, but nothing trails from the rectangular unit. They'd prefer to review the record here if a laptop can be found, but that's not procedure. Cyber Crime or perhaps Abby, if she's still in when they get back to HQ, will download the files onto a clean system and the originals: camera, computer and all else, will be secured in Evidence Holding.

Lisa holds a clear plastic Evidence bag for him.

Examining it through the bag they find the small port on the bottom that would link it to a computer such as the laptop in the bedroom.

They now have two computers whose files and programs have to be inspected in the morning. Sunday morning. Start of a new week. Abby will be so thrilled.

x

However, other than these discoveries, the rest of their search yields nothing else of immediate interest. Certainly there's no such surveillance found in the bedroom, though that may yield to a more intensive search in the morning. It may require them to pull apart molding or do more deconstruction unless Abby finds something really significant on the one (and perhaps only?) camera. Including the large trash can of shredded pages, they now have three distinct sets of evidence / clues to examine in the light of a Sunday - oh joy - morning.

Twenty minutes later they descend the stairs with the three bags, the last containing computer wires, exit the building and turn left toward their car at the end of the street.

The sun has set, by his watch it's 2148, the end of a too long day –

The collision from behind and hard impact to his head stagger him forward. He goes fifteen feet before he forces a stop and whirls.

Two men, big and dark. One has his arms about Lisa's throat. Choke hold. Pulls her backward, bent deep. Her Sig on the sidewalk! Silent. Strangled. He goes for his weapon.

Time turns on.

x

"Hold it!" the other one, on his right, commands. His gun punctuates the order. Lisa is bent too far back, no leverage, face reddening, mouth open, straining for air, right guy's gun is on him.

Kevin's Sig is half out. Half out is as good as locked in his desk.

"Toss it down."

Fifteen feet. Lisa strangling. Faces in shadow of the street light behind them. He's illuminated.

"Toss it."

He draws the Sig, carefully tosses it. It clatters midway between them.

"Let her go." He tries not to make it an appeal. Bastard's arm crushes her throat, other arm pushes hard. Strangling. Bent far back, pulled down. Off balance. Too far back to fight his strength. She kicks at him, pulls to ease pressure on her throat. Can't. Silent. Face deepening red. Struggles useless.

"You've got us. Let her _go_."

Fast right turn. Gun down to her abdomen. Bang! Bang! Bang!

x

Leap. Roll. Hands close around the Sig. Out of roll. Aim right. BangBangBang! Left, sight over Lisa. Blood a fountain. BangBangBangBang!

Men down. _Lisa_ Down. Blood spurting from below her stomach. Hands in the blood, flat. Find the holes. Blood slick. Fountain. Men down. One breathing. One not. Ignore.

"Lisa, Hang On!" Bloody hands slick. Stop three holes with two hands. "Hang on!"

Right hand to belt. Phone. Hold 9. Speaker. Emergency Signal button too. Drop it.

"Don't let go!" Hands back. Too much blood. She's whispering something. Can't understand. "Stay with me, hon!"

/911 Operator. What is your emergency?/

"Code 10:33, Code 10:33! Federal Agent Down! Spring Valley, Tilden St between 48 & 49!"

She's still.

"Hold on, honey." Too much blood. Not a fountain. A pool. She's too still. "Stay with me, Lisa. _Stay_ _With_ _Me_!"

.

.

To Be Continued.

.

.

Next Episode: 'The New Mark Affair'. As Season 4 closes Jackson McGillicuddy's scheme approaches fruition, the search for the Bachman and Esposito families, Jeremy Cintron and Rita Fisher continues as the team races to prevent the unleashing of a most deadly weapon.


End file.
